Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

DEATH OF SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL

Message of Condolence

Mr. Speaker: I have to acquaint the House that I have received a copy of the Resolution passed by the Legislative Assembly of the State of Oregon together with a letter from the President of the Senate expressing sympathy on the death of Sir Winston Churchill. I will have the texts placed in the Library where they can be seen by hon. Members.

Oral Answers to Questions — PENSIONS AND NATIONAL INSURANCE

Contributions

Mr. Gresham Cooke: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance if she is satisfied that all citizens who are liable to pay National Insurance contributions

do so at the present time; and how often checks are made to ensure that the law is complied with in this respect.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance (Mr. Norman Pentland): Inevitably there are people who seek to evade their liability. We are constantly on the watch for offenders, however, and I am satisfied that the amount of undetected non-compliance is relatively small. It would not be in the public interest to disclose the nature or frequency of the checks which are applied.

Mr. Gresham Cooke: Would the Joint Parliamentary Secretary agree that there are extraordinary cases which come to light from time to time of men who have not subscribed for, say, ten years of their working lives? Would it not be kinder to all concerned if people who fall from grace could be caught up at an early stage so that they do not lose their pensions and have to rely on National Assistance? Will he have a special inquiry made to see whether there are a lot of these cases?

Mr. Pentland: Yes, Sir. I will gladly look into what the hon. Gentleman has said.

Mr. Bence: Does the responsibility for the under-payment by an individual rest with the employer of that person in respect of employers' contributions since very often it is not the employee himself who has neglected to make contributions but the employer?

Mr. Pentland: Yes, Sir. In many cases that is correct. Graduated and flat rate contributions for 23 million employed persons are the responsibility of employers, who are periodically visited by about 1,200 inspectors stationed throughout the country.

Non-Pensioners

Mr. Freeson: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance whether she will give the estimated number of men and women over 65 and 60 years of age, respectively, who are not in receipt of a State pension, and the number of these who are in need but not in receipt of National Assistance; and whether she will give an undertaking that in the review of social security to be put in hand these elderly people will receive a state pension as of right.

Mr. Ennals: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance to what extent, in the review of the social services now being conducted, she will give special consideration to the claims of men and women aged 65 and 60 years, respectively, who are not entitled to a state Pension under existing legislation.

The Minister of Pensions and National Insurance (Miss Margaret Herbison): The number of old people with no retirement, contributory or non-contributory old-age pension is estimated to be about 370,000, of whom some 250,000 are not receiving help from the National Assistance Board. I regret that I am unable to say how many of the 250,000 might be entitled to assistance if they applied, but the Board is, of course, taking all practicable steps to make the National Assistance scheme known to those who might benefit from it.
As regards the general point, the Government are actively studying the best way of putting into effect their plans for giving additional help to persons of retirement age whose incomes are small, including both pensioners and non-pensioners.

Mr. Freeson: While thanking my right hon. Friend particularly for the last point in her reply about a study being undertaken to assist those people who are not at present in receipt and bearing n mind the hardship of a very large percentage of the number of people to whom she

referred, may I ask whether she can give an assurance that the Bill to introduce an income guarantee may be expected by early next Session, bearing in mind that we have had a most welcomed increase this year which will be coming into effect in a week or so from now?

Miss Herbison: As I said in my reply, we are actively studying the best way of helping these old people. I cannot give any specific guarantee today, but the time when my hon. Friend would like it to come in is the time when I would hope it would.

Mr. Ennals: While welcoming the assurance given by my right hon. Friend to the effect that the Government will be standing by their election pledge in terms of introducing an incomes guarantee, may I ask whether there is any way in which she could bring some form of supplementary aid to this group about whom we are speaking before the legislation comes in? In view of the large number of people, as she said, who are entitled to National Assistance but who do not apply, will she consider addressing an open letter to old people drawing their attention to what they are entitled so that they may take advantage of National Assistance while it still exists?

Miss Herbison: Ever so much has already been done to try to get all old people to realise that National Assistance is there for them. I agree with my hon. Friend that we should try other ways to get these people to understand that it is there for them, and I will certainly follow up the suggestion he has made.

Mr. Shepherd: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance if she is aware that payment of a half-rate pension to those over 75 years of age and not qualifying for retirement pension would ease the lot of many elderly people; and, in view of the relatively low cost of such provision, what consideration she will give to introducing legislation for this purpose.

Mr. Atkinson: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance what proposals she has in regard to paying half-rate pensions to those over 75 years of age and not qualifying for retirement pension.

Miss Herbison: The cost would be substantial and, in any event, it would hardly be possible to provide a pension through National Insurance for people who have not paid the necessary contributions. I would, however, refer the hon. Gentleman to the replies I have already given to the House this afternoon.

Mr. Shepherd: When the right hon. Lady says that the cost would be substantial, does not that mean that it would be of the order of about £20 million a year? As this would be a diminishing amount, can she not give further consideration to this question and, at any rate, assure us that she will support the Bill brought forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Abingdon (Mr. Neave)?

Miss Herbison: The amount is substantial, and what I have already said is that this is a matter to which the Government are giving the most serious consideration in the introduction of our income guarantee.

Mrs. Thatcher: Will the right hon. Lady say whether the figure of £20 million or £30 million is what she means when she says that the cost will be substantial? If that is so, would she confirm that the cost would be covered by an extra contribution of, approximately, 2d. or 3d. a side?

Miss Herbison: That would be the case—the cost for half pensions is just over £20 million—but when we are considering these matters we have to take into account, first of all, the fact that our present pension scheme is a contributory one and, secondly, that quite a number of people over 75 have a very good income indeed. I think that where we are considering £20 million or £40 million or £60 million, we should be ensuring that it is used to give a decent standard of living to the old people who really need it.

Mr. Eric S. Heffer: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance how many persons 75 years old do not qualify for retirement pension; and what would be the cost of providing them with a 25 per cent., 50 per cent., or 75 percent. retirement pension, respectively.

Miss Herbison: Rather more than 300,000; and of the order of £9 million, £20 million and £30 million, respectively, in 1965–66 after taking into account the

likely savings on payments by the National Assistance Board.

Mr. Heffer: Can my right hon. Friend give us some indication when the Government are likely to do something about this matter? Is she aware that there is great feeling and disquiet throughout the country about it?

Miss Herbison: Certainly. I realise the feeling, and we on this side of the House have had it for a long time. I assure my hon. Friend that it will be brought in as quickly as possible.

Mr. Tilney: Does the Minister realise that these people regard themselves as a forgotten group? Does she realise that they are dying off? Does she realise that many of them do not wish to go to the National Assistance Board?

Miss Herbison: I am sure that they regard themselves as a forgotten group. They have been forgotten for 13 years. During that time nothing was done for them.

Adopted Children

Mr. Farr: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance if she will take steps to introduce a scheme of grant payable to a married couple on the adoption of a child.

Miss Herbison: No, Sir.

Mr. Farr: Would the right hon. Lady look again at this matter? Childless couples have all the expenses of having the child without the inconvenience of confinement. From all the evidence I have assembled, I think that there is a good deal of justice in this claim.

Miss Herbison: The hon. Gentleman will be aware, I am sure, that the maternity grant, which was raised to £22 on 25th January last, is to cover the expenses of the mother giving birth to the baby, and the help she may need during those days after the baby is born. That is the only special help that the natural parent gets for the child. All the other expenses that the adoptive parents may have in adopting a child the natural parent has also. It is for that reason that we do not think that it would be right to give the maternity grant to the adoptive parents, but reserve it for the natural parents.

Mr. Bence: Would my right hon. Friend consult her right hon. and learned Friend to see whether it is possible for legal aid to be given to cover the legal charges involved in adoption?

Miss Herbison: That is another question, but I will look at it.

Pensions (Value)

Mr. Shepherd: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance what is the present purchasing power of the increase in the pension rate announced last November.

Mr. Ridsdale: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance what she estimates is the present purchasing power of the increase in the pension rate announced last November; and what items she takes into account when making this estimation.

Miss Herbison: On the basis of the Retail Prices Index (All items) for February, which is the latest available, the 12s. 6d. increase for a single pensioner is now worth about 1d. less than when it was announced in November; the 21s. for a couple is worth about 2d. less.

Mr. Shepherd: Is it not clear that these additional benefits are depreciating—[Interruption.] Will the right hon. Lady take up this matter with her right hon. Friends to ensure that in future they pursue policies that are not calculated further to diminish these advantages?

Miss Herbison: It is evident that, in the light of my reply, the hon. Gentleman has had some difficulty with his supplementary question. It seems to me that the efforts that have been made by this Government to steady the cost of living have been successful, and this is of the greatest importance to all old people.

Mr. Ridsdale: Could the Minister establish a cost of living index for old people, to include such critical items as heating and lighting, rates—which have gone up so much in the last three months—and, in particular, the cost of education borne by the elderly?

Miss Herbison: A great deal of thought has been given to getting a special cost-of-living index for the old people, and it is being examined at the present time.

Quite frankly, I prefer to link increases in pensions, not to the cost of living, but to increases in earnings. If one does that, the retail prices index—which really very often does not apply to old people—is a matter we would not have to take into account very much.

Mr. A. Henderson: Can my right hon. Friend include in her reply the fall in the value of old-age pensions between 1951 and 1964?

Miss Herbison: That is another question, which my right hon. and learned Friend might like to put down.

Mr. Farr: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance by what amount the purchasing power of the retirement pension for a married couple has declined since 15th October, 1964.

Miss Herbison: On the basis of the Retail Prices Index, the value of the present pension for a couple has declined by about ls. 7d.

Mr. Farr: In view of this continual erosion in the purchasing power of the old-age pension, can the right hon. Lady tell me why the increases which have been promised have not been implemented earlier? Is she aware that, if the purchasing power declines continually in the way that it is doing, when this increase is brought into being it will do little more than restore the old-age pension to the purchasing value it had when the Conservatives were last in office?

Miss Herbison: The reasons for the delay have been explained in debates we have had in the House. As to the loss in value of the pension, I made it clear in the Memorandum which was published on the National Insurance &c. Bill, 1964, that we expected that to give the pension the same purchasing power as it had at the previous increase would require only between 4s. and 5s. The actual loss in value of the pension is only 3s. 8d. Therefore, it looks as if, by the end of March, namely, in about one week's time, when the increased pension is paid the loss in value will not be even as much as we had reckoned when the 12s. 6d. increase, far beyond the loss in value, was announced.

Mr. Park: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance what is


the present purchasing power of the increase in the pension rate announced last November; and what, by the time the previous Administration went out of office, was the purchasing power of the last increase in the pension rate.

Miss Herbison: On the basis of the Retail Prices Index, the 12s. 6d. increase has lost 1d. in value since November 1964; the 10s. increase given in May 1963 lost over 4½d. in value by October 1964.

Mr. Park: Will my right hon. Friend agree that, for the 13 years when the party opposite was in power, the purchasing power of the pension was continually eroded by increases in living costs without any action being taken to correct the situation?

Mrs. Thatcher: Will the Minister point out to her hon. Friend her own testimonial given on page 7 of the Memorandum accompanying the last National Insurance Bill, when she said:
Over the period of the quinquennium under review, the rise in earnings was about 27 per cent., as compared with the increase in benefits of 35 per cent., so that in recent years improvements of benefit rates have been overtaking the rise in earnings"?

Miss Herbison: Since this is the second time that has been quoted in the House, perhaps, when it is quoted for the third time, the part before it will be given also. At the end of this month, for the first time ever since 1946, increases in pensions will by a slight margin have overtaken the percentage increase in earnings. At no time during the 13 years of the Tory Government did that obtain.

Deferred Retirement

Mr. Dean: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance what changes she proposes to make in the retirement condition and the earnings rule in order to encourage gradual retirement.

Miss Herbison: It is not easy to see what changes would produce the result the hon. Member has in mind, without completely undermining the present conditions. But, as he is aware, these matters will come within our review of the social security arrangements.

Mr. Dean: Would the right hon. Lady agree that now that the earnings rule has been abolished for widows it is neither

fair nor just to retain it for retirement pensioners? Can she give an assurance that she, in consultation with her right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, will work out an acceptable method for abolishing the rule altogether?

Miss Herbison: What we have done for widows does not seem to me to have much application to the principle that applies to retirement pensioners, but I again emphasise that this is a matter to which we will be giving attention in reviewing social security.

Lord Balniel: But can the Minister tell us what the logic is of abolishing the rule for widows and retaining it for retirement pensioners? As it is very much in their interests that elderly persons should be encouraged to continue in employment, if they wish to do so, for as long as possible, was it not a great pity that the Government only a few weeks ago voted down an Amendment from these benches that we should increase the increments for retirement pensioners?

Miss Herbison: One of the particular reasons for abolishing the rule for widows was to cover the widowed mother trying to give her family the same standard of living and educational opportunities that children having both parents get, and I think that it was a very wise thing to do. If we take the question as it applies to retirement pensioners, a great many of those of retirement age continue to work and, as previous Governments have done, we will from time to time examine the point where the earnings rule may begin to operate. The whole question will be left to the review.

Pensioners (Republic of Ireland)

Captain Orr: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance whether she will arrange for the proposed increases in contributory pensions to be paid to all who qualify, whether resident in the United Kingdom or not.

Mr. Pentland: The increases will be paid to all pensioners in the United Kingdom or in any country with which we have a reciprocal agreement which includes a provision that each country undertakes to pay its pension in the other country at current rates. The increase will not be paid to pensioners in other countries.

Captain Orr: Will the Minister look at this matter again? There are quite a number of persons—doctors, bankers, and the like—who spend their professional life in Northern Ireland and then choose to retire, having fully contributed, across the border into the Republic of Ireland. It seems harsh that they cannot get the same rate of pensions as those who have stayed.

Mr. Pentland: No, Sir. The Government have looked at this matter very carefully in the past. There are about 12,000 people in the Republic of Ireland who are drawing retirement or widows' pensions from the United Kingdom. Our existing agreement on social security with the Republic does not cover retirement pensions, because when the agreement was signed the Republic had no scheme for contributory pensions. But my right hon. Friend has opened negotiations with the Department of Social Welfare for a reciprocal agreement on pensions.

Retirement Pensioners

Mr. Ridsdale: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance what she estimates will be the increase in the number of retirement pensioners over the next 10 years.

Mr. Pentland: Rather more than 1¼ million.

Mr. Ridsdale: With this kind of increase expected, how does the Minister expect to fulfil the Labour Party manifesto pledge to provide minimum national income well above the existing rates without a means test and without adding at least 2s. 6d. to Income Tax?

Mr. Pentland: The hon. Gentleman must await the fulfilment of the pledge on the incomes guarantee which we will be bringing forward. I am not prepared to anticipate it at this time.

Commonwealth Immigrants

Mr. Geoffrey Lloyd: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance to what extent there would be practical difficulty in requiring Commonwealth citizens subject to the Commonwealth Immigrants Act to produce to her local offices on first entry into employment here their passports and Ministry of Labour vouchers as a safeguard

against evasion of British immigration controls.

Mr. Pentland: Practically everyone of working age in this country, whether employed or not, is entitled to pay National Insurance contributions, and in most cases this is compulsory. One card serves for the payment of all classes of contribution. While there would be practical difficulties in the procedure suggested, I take the view that it would not be right for me as a matter of National Insurance administration to require a person properly admitted to this country to produce these documents as a condition for issuing him with a contribution card.

Mr. Lloyd: Is the Minister aware that my purpose is to help the Home Secretary with a useful suggestion for the control of evasion? It is important to bring our administrative arrangements up to a standard of efficiency which will scotch, in the interests of bona fide immigrants, suspicion based upon this practice?

Mr. Pentland: With respect, the right hon. Gentleman is not assisting my right hon. Friend with this suggestion. Examination of passports would entail the Ministry looking at the passports of all applicants who disclose that they have come from Commonwealth countries. Since we would not be prepared to discriminate on grounds of colour or country, foreign countries would have to be considered as well. It would also involve additional work and delay, and consequent inconvenience, to innocent applicants and employers where the passport was not produced on the initial approach to the Ministry. Therefore, in our view, this would not appear to be justified.

National Assistance

Mr. William Hamilton: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance what steps she intends to take to ensure that the 500,000 people who are entitled to receive National Assistance but do not get it are made aware of their entitlement.

Miss Herbison: An inquiry is being made into the circumstances of retirement pensioners in order to find out, among other things, how many are


entitled to National Assistance but not receiving it. This inquiry, to be carried out in May and June, will also provide valuable information about the reasons why people do not take advantage of the National Assistance scheme. A great deal has, of course, already been done by both the National Assistance Board and the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance to bring the National Assistance scheme to the notice of people who may be entitled to assistance: but, as my hon. Friend knows, one of the objects of the Income Guarantee scheme which we intend to introduce is to deal with this problem.

Mr. Hamilton: Is my right hon. Friend aware that that Answer will give a good deal of satisfaction, certainly to hon. Members on this side? Nevertheless, does she not deplore the fact, even though she understands it, as I think we all do, that half a million old people are either too proud or too ignorant of the qualifying circumstances to apply for National Assistance? Does the National Assistance Board or her Department use television and radio and ask the voluntary associations to help to propagate to old people the need for them to apply for this assistance—indeed, the desirability of them applying?

Miss Herbison: It is not only a deplorable fact but, I think, a very distressing fact that old people are living on an income lower than they might have. It is because we have thought this for a long time that we decided on an income guarantee. I can assure my hon. Friend that much is done. We have a booklet entitled "Help for those in Need". This is distributed by the Board's local managers to people such as doctors, clergymen, social workers—indeed, any group of people that come in contact with old people. I do not think that television has been used, but I will certainly give serious consideration to employing this medium, since it might be one further way of letting old people know what they can obtain.

Mr. Frederic Harris: Since the Allen Commitee specifically made reference to the half a million people on National Assistance not applying for assistance towards their rates, and since the rate

burden is almost bound to go on ever increasing, unless something concrete is done to change the system, could not the Minister do something to direct the attention of these people to what relief they can get towards their rates, which is such a big part of their expenditure?

Miss Herbison: Certainly. In every possible way the National Assistance Board is doing this. If any hon. Member on either side of the House has any further ideas as to what we might do, I should be delighted to have them, as I am sure the Board would.

Mr. Murray: Is my right hon. Friend aware that this applies not only to old persons but also to the parents of a spastic who are not aware that they are entitled to National Assistance when their tax allowance drops at the age of 16?In this inquiry will my right hon. Friend look at this point as well?

Miss Herbison: Certainly.

Sir A. V. Harvey: Would the Minister take into account the fact that a number of people who are eligible for National Assistance do not apply because of the name "National Assistance"? Successive Governments have not appreciated this. Will she consider this point, because much could be done in this direction by changing the name?

Miss Herbison: It is true that the name "National Assistance" deters some people from going to the National Assistance Board. I would hope that when the income guarantee is working we will no longer have such a thing as National Assistance but that the whole thing will be brought into a Ministry of Social Security.

Mr. Boston: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance if she will seek to arrange for people receiving National Assistance Board grants who apply for aid under the domestic help service to be informed automatically that they may be eligible for an additional grant from the Board to cover the cost of the service.

Miss Herbison: Not all local authorities require people receiving National Assistance to make a payment for any domestic help provided. But I understand that it is the general practice of those who still do so either to inform


recipients of National Assistance when they apply for domestic help that they may be entitled to an additional grant from the Board to meet the payment, or to advise the Board's local office direct when domestic help is provided. I am writing to my hon. Friend about a case which he brought to my notice.

Mr. Boston: Is my right hon. Friend aware that that assurance will be warmly appreciated, but does she not agree from the case of which I have sent her details that there may be a sizeable number of people who are offered the domestic help service but turn it down believing that they have to pay the minimum, which in one county is 5s. a week, and not realising that they can in fact claim this back from the National Assistance Board?

Miss Herbison: This again is evidently another case where much greater publicity is needed. I can assure my hon. Friend that we will do our best with local authorities and the Board to see that this information is given to old people.

Mr. Higgins: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance whether, in view of the delay in introducing a minimum income guarantee scheme, she will increase the limits of income and capital which can be disregarded in assessing need for National Assistance.

Miss Herbison: Any increase in these limits Would benefit only those people with considerable savings or disregarded income; it would not help those whose needs are greatest or those who, although entitled to receive assistance, have not applied for it. A change of this sort would not therefore be a suitable interim measure pending the introduction of the income guarantee scheme.

Mr. Higgins: Is the right hon. Lady aware that a number of retired elderly people living in their own homes rely on National Assistance and then find that in view of rising rates and prices they have to sell their homes and the capital obtained rules them out from National Assistance? Would the right hon. Lady raise this limit so as to slow down this process?

Miss Herbison: The hon. Member will be aware that in payment of National Assistance, just as where there is an

increase in the rent, the person on assistance gets help from the Board, the same applies when there is an increase in rates.

Lord Balniel: The right hon. Lady then accepts the statement in the Question that there is a delay in introducing a minimum income guarantee scheme? As the Prime Minister in his election address said that this would be introduced without delay, can the right hon. Lady at least give an assurance that it will be introduced during the present Parliament? As some compensation for procrastination in her Department, will she at least give some attention to my hon. Friend's suggestion to increase the limit of income and capital which can be disregarded in assessing a person's eligibility for National Assistance?

Miss Herbison: The noble Lord usually amuses me with his synthetic anger. Is he aware that we are working on a minimum income guarantee scheme?

Mr. Speaker: Order. I have great difficulties with Questions and they are enhanced if Ministers ask questions of hon. Members opposite.

Miss Herbison: The noble Lord, then, will be aware that we are working on an income guarantee, and if his Government had been really worried about the position of such people as are mentioned here some form of income guarantee would have been introduced long ago.

Wage Stop (Assistance)

Mr. William Hamilton: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance how many people in England and Wales and Scotland, respectively, are recipients of National Assistance but subject to the provisions of the wage stop regulation; and what steps she intends to take to remedy this position.

Miss Herbison: In December, 1964, when the latest count was taken, the approximate numbers of unemployed persons whose National Assistance allowances were restricted by reference to their normal earnings were 9,500 in England and Wales and 4,500 in Scotland. This is one of the matters which will be examined in the course of the Government's general review of the social security schemes.

Mr. Hamilton: Does my right hon. Friend recognise that the figures show that there is a disproportionate number of people suffering in this way in Scotland in relation to the population because wages in Scotland are generally lower than they are in England? Does not she recognise that this is penalising people who are on National Assistance in Scotland? In view of the deplorable fact that there are people presumably earning wages which are less than the subsistence levels laid down by the National Assistance Board, can my right hon. Friend impress upon the Department and upon other Ministers the desperate urgency of finding a solution to this problem?

Miss Herbison: I think that my hon. Friend knows the attention which I and other Scottish Members have given to this matter over the years. The Minister of Labour, in answer to a Question, said that there were between 50,000 and 150,000 people actually in work whose wages were below National Assistance standards. When I presented the regulations for National Assistance I pointed out that we were giving attention to this point and that family allowances were one important element in the problem. I assure my hon. Friend that I consider this a matter of some urgency.

Mrs. Thatcher: Is the right hon. Lady therefore thinking of implementing her pledge on family allowances which appears on page 15 of "New Frontiers for Social Security"?

Miss Herbison: The hon. Lady will have to wait until the work which we are doing on this matter is completed.

Mr. Edward M. Taylor: Does the right hon. Lady appreciate that her Answer will come as a surprise and shock to those who read her forthright comments, reported in column 926 of the OFFICIAL REPORT, of 29th June, 1964, when she referred to the then 6,000 families living below subsistence level and a substantial number of children suffering from malnutrition in consequence? If the right hon. Lady seriously believes that children are underfed or suffering from starvation she should not be prepared to wait for a review.

Miss Herbison: I said from the beginning that for some years this has

been a matter of great concern to me. It is still a matter of great concern, and we on this side of the House are giving urgent consideration to a matter which for years we asked the previous Government to tackle.

Mrs. Lena Jeger: While we appreciate the great thought that my right hon. Friend is giving to this Question, may I ask whether she is aware that many of the workers concerned are almost unemployable and that some have been unemployed for a very long time. Is she aware that in certain cases of which I have personal knowledge a realistic figure of normal wages is not being taken in implementing the wage stop? Could my right hon. Friend look at this urgently while we are waiting the longterm review?

Miss Herbison: This is one of the matters to which I am giving attention. There are other cases, and they vary greatly, about which we may be able to do something before the review is finished. I am having discussions with the National Assistance Board on these very matters.

Mr. Leadbitter: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance how many applicants for National Assistance in The Hartlepools are receiving allowances subject to the limitations of the wage stop; and what is their average allowance.

Mr. Pentland: Separate figures are not available for The Hartlepools, but in the area of the Board's offices in West Hartlepool and Hartlepool, which also covers parts of the Easington, Stockton and Sedgefield Rural Districts, there were 219 unemployed persons whose assistance allowances were restricted by reference to their usual earnings. Information regarding the average allowance paid to these 219 persons is not available.

Mr. Leadbitter: Will my hon. Friend accept from me that this is a great source of irritation in the office? While I am the first to agree that the efficiency of management and staff must always be applauded, there are these slight difficulties which create unpleasantnesses at these offices. If I may refer to a previous Question, will my hon. Friend take into account that the problem of the


stop is something which ought to be removed quickly, and may we take it that his right hon. Friend who is looking at prices and incomes will examine the whole question of the limitation of incomes and the limitation of this sort of allowance?

Mr. Pentland: Yes, Sir.

Ten Shilling Widows

Mr. Channon: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance if she will take steps to ensure that those 10 shilling widows in receipt of National Assistance will not be deprived of the full increase in their pension because there has not been a commensurate increase in National Assistance scales.

Miss Herbison: No, Sir. Widows' pensions and retirement pensions must be taken into account in full when a person's need of assistance is assessed, and it would not be equitable to make an exception in the case of the widow's basic pension.

Mr. Channon: Would the right hon. Lady not agree that probably only a very small number of 10s. widows are in this position and that what is asked for in the Question would cost very little to do? Would she not agree that it would mean that those 10s. widows in the greatest need, to quote her previous Answer, would get the greatest help?

Miss Herbison: The hon. Member must also be aware that other widows who have the full pension and are having the increase might resent this very much and might be in greater difficulties than some of the 10s. widows. It seems more equitable to have the same rule applicable to all widows and those in receipt of National Assistance.

Assistance Office, West Hartlepool

Mr. Leadbitter: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance if she will examine the staffing and accommodation position in the National Assistance Board offices in West Hartlepool in order that mothers with children in partilar may not have to wait too long for attention and to achieve strict confidence and privacy during interviews.

Miss Herbison: The National Assistance Board informs me that the staffing of its two offices in West Hartlepool is adequate to deal with the work arising there. The nature of the office premises does unfortunately create difficulties, but every effort is made to deal speedily with the public who call there and to provide privacy so far as is possible. As the hon. Member already knows, the Ministry of Public Building and Works is planning to erect a new building to house both offices.

Mr. Leadbitter: Is my right hon. Friend aware that, as far as my information is concerned, her Answer falls a little short of the general experience in one particular office? Is she aware that mothers with young children are having to wait a considerable time and that neither the nature of the office nor its staffing leads to pleasant relationships between the staff and applicants? Would my right hon. Friend look at this matter again in order that these irritants can be removed?

Miss Herbison: Certainly. The information which I have from the Board makes it clear, as I said in my Answer, that the nature of the premises creates difficulties. We accept that, and that is why a new building is to be erected. I have also been informed by the Board that whenever a mother with young children calls every effort is made to deal with her as speedily as possible. I am certain that the Board will continue to do that and that when new premises are available many of the difficulties will disappear.

Mr. Shinwell: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the lack of facilities at the West Hartlepool office, which covers part of my area, is more than made up by the generous and friendly attitude of the manager of that office and his staff?

Miss Herbison: I am sure that they will be very pleased to hear that tribute paid to them. I am certain that they try, in very difficult circumstances, to deal justly with people.

Motor Car Workers (Unemployment Benefit)

Mr. Chapman: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance why, when the recent strike at the British


Motor Corporation's Longbridge factory was confined to maintenance men and had no connection with production workers, the local insurance officer has disallowed some unemployment benefit claims from the latter; whether she will speed the hearing of appeals against this decision; and whether, in view of the hardship and injustice caused by this denial and delay of benefit payments to men who have paid their contributions to the National Insurance Fund, she will review the trade dispute disqualification procedure of the National Insurance Act.

Miss Herbison: The unemployment benefit claims referred to were disallowed under the trade dispute disqualification provisions of the National Insurance Act. I cannot comment on the decisions of the independent adjudicating authorities, but I can assure my hon. Friend that arrangements are being made for appeals against the insurance officer's decision to be heard as quickly as possible. On the general position I have nothing to add to my reply to the Questions put to me by my hon. Friend, the Member for Oldbury and Halesowen (Mr. Horner) on 18th March.

Mr. Chapman: This situation is wholly and disastrously unsatisfactory. Is my right hon. Friend aware that thousands of men who have no connection with the strike are being denied benefit by the National Insurance system after paying contributions for years and at a time when they most need help? Is this not absolutely disgraceful, and ought there not to be the review which I ask for in my Question to see whether this antiquated machinery needs a little oiling?

Miss Herbison: I am well aware of the feeling of those men who have been denied benefit, but at this stage there is nothing whatever that the Minister can do. We must follow the provisions laid down in our legislation. I assure my hon. Friend that, although the rule has been examined many times since it was put on the Statute Book, I am determined to have it looked into very thoroughly again, but at this time the men have got to abide by the legislation which we have.

Mr. Speaker: Mr. Dell.

Mr. Chapman: In view of the unsatisfactory nature of the reply, I beg to give notice—

Mr. Speaker: It would not be fair I have called the hon. Member for Birkenhead.

Mr. Dell: Is my right hon. Friend aware that exactly the same situation arose in Cammell Laird at Birkenhead last year causing grave injustice to large numbers of people, and will she include this matter in the review of our social security arrangements which is now taking place with a view to righting what is undoubtedly a grave injustice?

Widows

Mrs. Lena Jeger: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance how many widows, in the latest convenient period, have been disqualified from benefit on account of cohabitation; and in how many cases benefit has been restored when the cohabitation ceased.

Mr. Pentland: It is estimated that in 1964 about 500 widows became disqualified for this reason from receiving benefit or pension under the National Insurance, industrial injuries and war pension schemes. In the same year the pensions of about 200 such widows were restored.

Mrs. Jeger: Will my hon. Friend look at the matter again? Is he aware that, when a woman's husband dies, she receives from the Ministry a document setting out her pension position, paragraph 21 of which refers to disqualifications on remarriage or cohabitation? Is not this a rather insensitive time at which to bring such a matter to the notice of a recently bereaved woman, and could not there be a more sympathetic and imaginative way of dealing with what is quite a small point?

Mr. Pentland: My hon. Friend may be aware that we are already looking at the many complexities of this question. It is a difficult matter, but I assure her that the particular point she has raised will be looked at.

Income Guarantee

Mr. Lomas: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance if she will give an assurance that a minimum income guarantee will be introduced in the lifetime of this Parliament.

Miss Herbison: As my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of


Lancaster told the House on 25th November and repeated on 19th February, the income guarantee is an essential part of our legislative programme, and we are working on it.

Mr. Lomas: I did not doubt for a moment what the answer would be, but is my hon. Friend aware that the assurance that the matter is being worked on will give great satisfaction to those who voted Labour at the last election in the certain knowledge that this Government would keep their election pledges, and will she give some kind of undertaking that the persons who are at present outside the insurance scheme because of the contributory factor will have consideration given to their case in relation to the income guarantee?

Miss Herbison: Certainly; the income guarantee is to cover all people who really need help.

Lord Balniel: In the review will the Minister give attention to the importance of encouraging private pension schemes? Does she recall that, in 1st February, the Parliamentary Secretary, when asked whether he would give an assurance that he would not discourage private pension schemes, replied that he could not give this assurance? Will she repudiate her Parliamentary Secretary?

Miss Herbison: No, Sir. That has nothing whatever to do with the Question I have answered.

Mr. Ridsdale: Is the right hon. Lady aware that we are getting nothing but procastination and evasion in response to the questions we are asking about a minimum national income, and will she answer three very simple questions? When is the scheme to be introduced? What will be the cost? Will it be introduced without a means test?

Miss Herbison: I have nothing to add to all the answers I have given today.

Industrial Diseases (Farmers' Lung)

Sir H. Studholme: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance when farmers' lung, which has been recommended by the Medical Advisory Council for inclusion in the List of Industrial Diseases, will be officially eligible for pension.

Miss Herbison: I am awaiting the further advice of the Industrial Injuries Advisory Council about the precise terms to be adopted for the occupational cover if the disease is to be prescribed. I hope to have the Council's views shortly, when I will give the matter my immediate attention.

Sir H. Studholme: Will the right hon. Lady do everything she can to hasten the
inclusion of this disease? I have been trying to get this done for a long time, and if it is included it will give tremendous relief to many people.

Miss Herbison: Certainly. As quickly as I get it from the Council, I will give it my attention.

Separated Wives

Mrs. Shirley Williams: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance if she will take steps to enable separated wives, whose husbands are entitled to draw old age pensions for themselves and their wives, to draw their pensions individually, and not through their husbands.

Miss Herbison: No, Sir. Where a wife is entitled to a retirement pension on her husband's insurance it is already paid direct to her, but the increase of a husband's retirement pension for a wife under the age of 60 is subject to the general conditions governing benefit increases for dependants and the National Insurance Act therefore requires that it should be paid to the pensioner himself. However, I am examining the working of these provisions and shall write to my hon. Friend.

Mrs. Williams: Is my right hon. Friend aware that I am glad that she is examining this rather obsolete aspect of the National Insurance Acts, which treats wives in this category as dependants? I am sure that she is also aware that there is a good deal of injustice in this respect with husbands not passing increases on to their wives from whom they are estranged?

Miss Herbison: It is because of the difficulties, arising from the fact that these wives are not getting the increase when they ought to get it, that I am having the matter examined.

Earnings Rule

Mr. Ensor: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance what steps she intends to take in the next year towards the complete abolition of the earnings rule.

Miss Herbison: I have no proposals for the complete abolition of the earnings rule and of the retirement condition, but the level at which the earnings rule operates is of course kept under review.

Oral Answers to Questions — MINISTRY OF HEALTH

Imported Food (Testing)

Mr. Hector Hughes: asked the Minister of Health how many medical officers are employed by public health and other local authorities to undertake clinical and bacteriological tests of imported food; what are their scientific qualifications; how many such tests they have taken during the last five years; and with what results, respectively.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health (Mr. Charles Loughlin): Local authorities do not employ medical officers for this purpose. Medical officers of health employed by local authorities however have powers to examine imported food and take samples for examination by an appropriate laboratory.

Mr. Hughes: Does the Minister realise that this is a very important and urgent matter, neglect of which may expose the British public to the importation of germs and perhaps the danger of epidemics? Will he, therefore, give it close attention?

Mr. Loughlin: We realise that this is an important matter. I am conscious that my hon. and learned Friend always has at the back of his mind the epidemic in Aberdeen. We ought to get this in perspective. In the last ten years we imported 600,000 tons of corned beef, which was the subject of the Aberdeen epidemic. It made up 3,500 million meals at a 6-oz. portion. There were 550 non-fatal typhoid cases in that period and no fatal cases. In practice, the risk is of one non-fatal case of typhoid for every 6½ million meals.I can assure my hon. and learned Friend that, although we accept that this is the correct perspective, we are not complacent at all about the position.

Mr. Cooper: Is not this a compliment to the public health legislation introduced by various Conservative Governments?

Health Clubs

Mr. Dodds: asked the Minister of Health, in view of the concern arising from the failure of health club branches to provide qualified staff for the gymnasia or medical checks to ensure members are in a state of health to use the equipment provided, if he will seek the necessary powers to control such activities.

Mr. Hamling: asked the Minister of Health whether he will seek powers to deal with the risks to public health arising from the activities of health clubs, details of which have been sent to him by the hon. Member for Woolwich, West.

The Minister of Health (Mr. Kenneth Robinson): I do not think that any action on my part is required.

Mr. Dodds: If I can provide my right hon. Friend with substantial evidence of the serious consequences of the absence of medical checks by unqualified staff, will he at least have a look at this? If he can do no more, will he contact the local authorities and let them have this information to show that there is some need for some sort of control?

Mr. Robinson: I will have a look at anything which my hon. Friend likes to send me, but the point is that health clubs provide exercises for fit people under instructors, and they do not provide remedial treatment. It is for that reason that I say that it is not, I think, a matter for me.

Oral Answers to Questions — HOSPITALS

South-Eastern Area

Sir R. Thompson: asked the Minister of Health whether, in his reconsideration of the hospital building programme, he will bear in mind the population increase forecast for the south-eastern area and resite his new hospital buildings close to the enlarged communities now being established.

Mr. K. Robinson: I am asking hospital Boards to take likely population changes into consideration in the review of the Hospital Building Programme. In


the siting of all new hospital developments, the point made in the latter part of the hon. Member's Question will, I am sure, be taken into account.

Sir R. Thompson: While thanking the Minister for that reply, may I ask whether he would keep in the closest possible touch with his colleague the Minister of Housing and Local Government so that he will then see where these planning applications are coming along and get the information on which he can re-site the new hospitals in the most efficient possible way?

Mr. Robinson: Yes, Sir.

Mr. Lubbock: Will the Minister be kind enough to tell me how the regional boards can possibly take into account the future growth of population when there are no such estimates available at the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, as they have told me, in relation particularly to the new boroughs in Greater London?

Mr. Robinson: The regional boards have access to all the statistical projections of population. My Department is in contact with the Ministry of Housing and Local Government and as soon as they have information, we shall pass it on.

Congleton War Memorial Hospital

Sir A. V. Harvey: asked the Minister of Health if, in view of the emergency heart operation recently carried out at the Congleton War Memorial Hospital to save the life of a child, he will give an assurance that the present facilities given by this hospital will continue.

Mr. Loughlin: I am glad to note the good use being made of this hospital. No question of its replacement can arise until better provision for the work now done there has been made and this could not be for many years.

Sir A. V. Harvey: That is all very well, but is the Minister aware that as the arrangement stands this hospital is down for closure some years ahead? Is he aware of an operation to a three-year-old child whose heart stopped beating for several minutes and who was rushed to this hospital, where a local doctor carried out an emergency operation with great skill and saved the life

of this child? Had the child had to go to Macclesfield for this operation, its life would undoubtedly have been lost. Can my constituents in Congleton be assured that this hospital will continue its useful existence?

Mr. Loughlin: I realise that resuscitation needs immediate action, but the hon. Member will agree that we cannot possibly have the whole range of the medical services at hand all the time for everybody. The new district general hospital to serve Macclesfield will not be ready for several years. There will be consultation with all the people in the locality, and we shall do our best to ensure that every possible service is available for the people in this part of the country.

Mr. Wood: May I ask the Parliamentary Secretary whether his right hon. Friend is still firm in his intention that none of these hospitals will be closed without his personal agreement?

Mr. Loughlin: The right hon. Gentleman is aware that my right hon. Friend is reviewing the whole situation in hospitals, and there is nothing I can add to his statement in the House on 8th February.

Sir A. V. Harvey: On a point of order. I raised this matter on the Adjournment during the lifetime of the last Parliament. In view of the unsatisfactory Answer, may I be allowed to say that I shall endeavour to raise it again?

Mental Hospitals (Nursing Staff)

Mr. J. E. B. Hill: asked the Minister of Health by what numbers and percentage the present nursing staff in hospitals for mentally deficient patients falls short of the establishment desired by each regional hospital board; and what are the principal reasons for these deficiencies.

Mr. K. Robinson: As the Answer contains a table of figures, I will with permission, circulate these in the OFFICIAL REPORT.* Boards do not adopt the same criteria in assessing their deficiencies, which they attribute to many causes, including competition from other forms of employment, inaccessibility of hospitals and hours of duty.

*Note: See OFFICIAL REPORT, 23rd March, 1965; Written Answers, cols. 65–66.]

Mr. Hill: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that, in addition to the overall shortage in all sorts of mental health hospitals, there is the more serious problem that some hospitals which are newly built and which therefore should be attractive—Little Plumstead, in Norfolk, for instance—have not been used yet because of shortage of staff? As this seems to be a general problem, is the right hon. Gentleman satisfied that pay and conditions are sufficient to attract the minimum number of recruits we must have? If he is not so satisfied, will he inquire into the position?

Mr. Robinson: I think that this is more a local than a general problem. The hon. Gentleman will know that remuneration is a matter for the Whitley Council and that there is a claim for nursing staff before the appropriate Whitley Council at the moment. In the East Anglian region, in which the hon. Gentleman's constituency is situated, the hospitals already have more staff in relation to beds than the national average, although it is true that their requirements are pitched rather higher than the national average.

WATER SUPPLIES (BARRAGE SCHEMES)

The following Question stood upon the Order Paper:

Mr. MONSLOW: To ask the First Secretary of State and Secretary of State for Economic Affairs whether he will make a feasibility study of the Morecambe Barrage project and other barrage schemes; and if he will make a statement.

The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Economic Affairs (Mr. William Rodgers): With permission, I will now answer Question No. 83.
The Government have considered all the information currently available about the economic and social benefits which these schemes might create and about their likely costs. We have concluded that no final assessment of the merits of these ambitious and imaginative proposals can be made until further technical studies have been carried out.
The work already done has shown that the justification for a barrage across

Morecambe Bay or Solway Firth would rest primarily on the conservation of water on a scale large enough to meet the long term needs of north-west England and south-west Scotland. Advantages for communications, power generation and amenity would arise, but would be subsidiary. We have, therefore, decided to commission further technical work with a view to determining the feasibility and probable cost of constructing barrages, and more precisely what quantity and quality of water each of these two schemes might make available.
My right hon. Friend the Minister of Land and Natural Resources is asking the Water Resources Board to take charge of these studies, but in view of the responsibility of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland for water resources and regional development in Scotland, the Scottish Office will work jointly with the Board on the Solway project.
As for the Dee, we welcome the initiative which local authorities in the area have already shown in beginning investigations into the possibility of constructing a new crossing of the lower estuary which might take the form of a barrage. It is possible that a scheme of this kind by substantially improving communications between Merseyside and North Wales might enable part of the conurbation's future population and industrial growth to be accommodated in Flintshire. Some land reclamation might also be possible.
The Dee and Clwyd River Board has already commissioned a hydraulic study of such a crossing at a point about halfway down the estuary and the Government are considering, in consultation with the Board and the Cheshire and Flintshire County Councils, whether the scope of this study might be usefully widened.
All three schemes are very expensive, long-term proposals. The programme of initial feasibility studies which I have announced will take some time to complete. The subsequent steps to be taken will have to be decided in the light of the results of these studies and the situation at the time.

Mr. Monslow: Is my hon. Friend aware that this decision will be very


welcome not only in the Barrow-in-Furness area, but throughout the whole of the North-West and, indeed, in all the other areas affected by the schemes he has enumerated? I sincerely hope that, now that the Government have agreed to feasibility studies, we shall, ere long—not overlong, I hope—be able to implement the projects I have in mind.

Mr. Fletcher-Cooke: While congratulating the Joint Under-Secretary of State on putting forward these studies, may I ask whether he realises that there is great urgency about this, particularly as regards water, because the whole of the North-West, in spite of what hon. Members from other parts of the country may think, has a deficiency of water and needs water very soon?
The hon. Gentleman did not explain what sort of body it is to be, but will he induce his study group to push on with energy, if only for the reason that, although there are many other considerations which are important in this very imaginative scheme, other and smaller countries, such as Holland, have managed to carry out such developments many years before us and more quickly?

Mr. Rodgers: We fully appreciate the urgency of these schemes. That is why we wanted to consider them together. These are technical studies as the first step to full feasibility studies. We hope to have the first results of the study for Morecambe and Solway at least within two years.

Mr. Howe: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the Government's increasing interest in the proposed Dee barrage scheme will be warmly welcomed on Merseyside? May we have an assurance that the investigation of the feasibility side of that scheme will be pressed forward with as much urgency as the investigations into the other schemes? In this case, will the hon. Gentleman bear in mind the possible impact on road alterations and perhaps the road structure in the Wirral and in Merseyside generally?

Mr. Rodgers: We shall certainly bear the latter point in mind. As the hon. Gentleman knows, the initiative for this scheme came from the local authorities. Under the present arrangements, they do

not expect to have the results of their technical studies before 1969, but, of course, if the results can be available sooner all of us will be a great deal happier.

Mr. Dell: Are the results of the studies likely to be available in time to prevent any further invasion of the Lake District by water authorities, such as Manchester?

Mr. Rodgers: I should make it clear that, in the case of Morecambe and Solway, we have long-term needs in mind. These preliminary surveys will take up to two years, and it would be a great mistake to assume that the short term and very pressing needs of Manchester, for example, can be met by these longterm proposals.

Mr. Barber: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that my right hon. Friend the Member for Bexley (Mr. Heath)—who is, unfortunately, absent today—will be pleased at this development, which was envisaged in a statement he made last July? As I understand, the hon. Gentleman says that the technical studies might, all being well, be completed within two years, but that the full feasibility studies would take longer. Can he say how long the full feasibility studies might take, assuming that the technical study is saisfactory at the end of the two years?

Mr. Rodgers: No, it is not possible to do so, for obvious reasons. We are starting these technical studies to find out the prospects for the projects. Until we know the results of the studies, we cannot measure the extent of further studies which may be required, any more than we can measure the cost of them. We have been anxious to look at all three schemes together and this statement will be far more satisfactory than a rapid decision on any one project in isolation.

Mr. Heffer: Is my hon. Friend aware that his statement about the Dee will be very welcome to Merseyside as well, and that I echo what was said by the hon. Member for Bebington (Mr. Howe) about this? When is there likely to be a definite decision on this matter? When the decision is made, will a meeting of the local authorities of the area be called?

Mr. Rodgers: I do not think that it would be right for me to anticipate the


procedure that may be followed when the results of the initial studies are complete. If the local authorities have any representations to make, we should be delighted to receive them.

Mr. Lubbock: Who will carry out these Technical studies? Will they be made by technical officers of the Ministries, or by outside consultants? Will the report of the technical consultants or of the officials be published?

Mr. Rodgers: I cannot give an answer to the second part of the hon. Gentleman's supplementary question. Since these are technical studies I do not imagine that they will be of the widest possible interest, but we can decide on that when their results become available. No decision has yet been made on who are to carry out the studies. Our anxiety is to get the studies done in the quickest possible way and with the greatest efficiency and expertise.

Several Hon. Members: cc—

Mr. Speaker: Order. We must progress, otherwise we do not make any.

ADEN (OPEARTIONS, DHALA)

Mr. Thorneycroft: (by Private Notice)asked the Secretary of State for Defence whether he will make a statement about the engagement on the Aden-Dhala Road and the resultant loss of British soldiers' lives.

The Secretary of State for Defence (Mr. Denis Healey): In view of repeated attacks against Federal National Guard and Federal Regular Army positions in Dhala and against traffic on the Dhala Road, units of the Federal Regular Army have begun an operation in a small area east of Dhala. The operation is supported by a company of Coldstream Guards and is proceeding satisfactorily.
I regret to inform the House that as a result of a mortar attack on Saturday evening against elements of our forces three guardsmen were killed; one Royal Artillery officer, two N.C.O.s of the Coldstream Guards and one guardsman were wounded. The next-of-kin have been informed.
I am sure that the House will join me in conveying their sympathy with the families concerned.

Mr. Thorneycroft: May I associate my right hon. and hon. Friends and myself with the Secretary of State's very proper expressions of sympathy? I do not press him about the nature of the engagement, but will he keep us informed of the progress of these arrangements, because it was an incident of this kind which led to fairly widespread hostilities about a year ago?
My other question is whether the Government are making any representations to the U.A.R. which, after all, has 50,000 troops on the other side of the border. There is not the slightest doubt that these tribesmen are being armed, equipped and incited to operations of this character.

Mr. Healey: Of course I will keep the House informed, although it is believed and hoped that this will be a short-term operation on a minor scale. We have no evidence at the moment that the mortars with which our men were attacked on Saturday were supplied from abroad, but this may well be the case. Certainly, if it should turn out to be so, we shall make representations in the appropriate quarters.

Mr. Shinwell: May I reinforce the request of the right hon. Member for Monmouth (Mr. Thornycroft) for a rather fuller statement on the operations in this area? We have had very little information of late. A very large number of our troops are deployed in the area, where we are spending a lot of money, yet we hear little or nothing about attempting to reach a political solution. Will my right hon. Friend take an early opportunity to make a full statement in the House about what is happening in the area?

Mr. Healey: I am not sure to what extent it would be for me to make a statement of the nature for which my right hon. Friend asks, but I can say that this is a very small operation. Only one company of British troops is involved and this operation is entirely separate from the operations which took place last year in the Radfan area, which is substantially to the south.

Mr. J. Amery: While this operation may be fairly small, there have recently been a number of terrorist operations in Aden mounted from the Yemen. May I


ask the right hon. Gentleman two questions? First, would he consider with the Colonial Secretary and the Federal Government in South Arabia whether the road from Aden into the Yemen ought not to be closed? I understand that the Egyptian Army and the Yemen Republic are largely supplied by this road. Is it advisable that we should be supplying authorities operating actively to attack our men and to subvert the South Arabian Federation?
Secondly, will he undertake to keep the Foreign Secretary, who is now in Washington, informed of these latest developments? The United States has been supplying a good deal of aid to the United Arab Republic and might like to discourage Colonel Nasser from using its aid against its own allies.

Mr. Healey: The possible closing of the Dhala road into the Yemen raises many questions which, of course, are under consideration by Ministers. There is no evidence arising out of this incident on which I am reporting which would justify us in making the sort of approach which the hon. Gentleman has proposed.

QUESTIONS TO MINISTERS

Mr. Farr: On a point of order. May I raise with you, Mr. Speaker, a point of order relating to Question Time?
Some weeks ago, I tabled a Question for answer by the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food next Wednesday. On that day, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster happens to be answering Oral Questions first. But, in the expectation that he would take only his normal four or five questions, I tabled my Question to the Minister of Agriculture. However, I notice from the Order Paper which I received this morning that the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster now has no fewer than 56 Oral Questions on Wednesday, no fewer than 48 of which have been tabled by hon. Members opposite during the last few days.
It appears to me, particularly as the last time the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster answered Questions, on 3rd February, he had only five to which to reply, that hon. Members opposite desire

to shelter the Minister of Agriculture from Questions by tabling a number of frivolous Questions which could perfectly well be answered by Written Answers.
My purpose in rising is to ask whether you would be good enough to rule whether you consider such behaviour to be in the best traditions of the House and, further, whether you think that it is in the best interests of the House that hon. Members, on either side of the House, should be forbidden the opportunity to question the Minister of Agriculture for the first time in six weeks.

Mr. Speaker: I say nothing whatsoever one way or the other about the hon. Gentleman's suspicions. As regards the propriety of what has happened, a number of Questions, all of which are in order, have been tabled. I cannot assist the hon. Gentleman about that. It is the right of hon. Members to table Questions which are in order. If we found a great deal of interest in the activities of one Department, some adjustment of the roster might be necessary, but that has not arisen yet.

Sir G. Nicholson: Further to that point of order. Is not a rather serious situation arising and is not the House in danger of losing some of its dignity and its reputation? Are there not many examples, bogus points of order, or whatever it may be? We now seem to see Question Time, far from being a time devoted to the elicitation of information and having a bit of fun with the Government, being used as a party weapon at the cost of the reputation of the House.
While the interests of hon. Members are very important, the reputation of the House should be the dearest thing to all of us and above all the interests of individual Members. Can you not take a definite step, Mr. Speaker, to express your disapproval, or approval, to the whole House?

Sir D. Renton: Further to that point of order. Is it not a well-known fact, known throughout the world, that Question Time is the most effective instrument for the exercise of democracy in this country, and are not these practices, intended to destroy the effectiveness of Question Time, about the most killing thing which democracy can face?

Mr. Speaker: No one has greater concern than I about the state of Question Time, for obvious reasons. I do not think it right to make pronouncements about it myself. I hope to have the opportunity in due course to put my views to the Select Committee which the House has appointed to examine the matter. I doubt whether discussion of our practices after Questions, like this, very much helps one way or the other.

Mr. Frederic Harris: On a point of order. As the Minister of Agriculture is bound to be keen to answer these Questions, can he not ask the Leader of the House whether he could answer them on Friday?

Mr. Speaker: No doubt if changes in our practice are recommended to us by the Select Committee, and adopted by the House, changes of that kind can be made. I doubt whether we are assisted by such suggestions now.

ADJOURNMENT DEBATES

Mr. Speaker: I have to tell the House something about Adjournment time.
It has been represented to me that it would be more convenient if subjects selected for debate on the Adjournment for the following fortnight could be made known not later than 1 p.m. on the relevant Thursday. I am willing to do this on the assumption that the change would meet the general wish of the House. I must ask, however, that Members desiring to raise a matter on the Adjournment should notify me before the rising of the House on the Wednesday before—that is, the Wednesday immediately preceding the next fortnightly period—instead of, as now, before 4 p.m. on the Thursday.
The new arrangement will be effective from Wednesday, 31st March.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE (SUPPLY)

Ordered,
That this day Business other than the Business of Supply may be taken before Ten o'clock, and the provisions of paragraph (5) of Standing Order No. 18 (Business of Supply) shall not apply; but with respect to each Resolution reported from the Committee of Supply, Mr. Speaker shall put forthwith the Question, That this House doth agree with the Committee in the said Resolution.—[Wr. Bowden.]

Orders of the Day — SUPPLY

[13TH ALLOTTED DAY]

REPORT [17TH MARCH]

CIVIL ESTIMATES AND DEFENCE (CENTRAL) ESTIMATE, 1965–66, VOTE ON ACCOUNT; DEFENCE (ROYAL ORDNANCE FACTORIES) ESTIMATES, 1965–66; DEFENCE (ARMY) PURCHASING (REPAYMENT) SERVICES ESTIMATE, 1965–66; DEFENCE (AIR) ESTIMATES, 1965–66; CIVIL ESTIMATES, SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATES, 1964–65; DEFENCE (ROYAL ORDNANCE FACTORIES) SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATE, 1964–65; DEFENCE (AIR) SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATE, 1964–65; CIVIL ESTIMATES (EXCESSES), 1963–64

Resolutions reported,

CIVIL ESTIMATES AND DEFENCE (CENTRAL) ESTIMATE, 1965–66

(VOTE ON ACCOUNT)

1. That a sum, not exceeding £1,915,906,800, be granted to Her Majesty, on account, for or towards defraying the charges for the following Civil Departments and for Defence (Central) for the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1966:—

CIVIL ESTIMATES

CLASS I




£


1.
House of Lords
123,000


2.
House of Commons
977,000


3.
Treasury and Subordinate Departments
1,850,000


4.
Department of Economic Affairs
399,000


5.
Privy Council Office
20,000


6.
Post Office Ministers
5,000


7.
Customs and Excise
8,600,000


8.
Inland Revenue
23,500.000


9.
Exchequer and Audit De-partment
340,000


10.
Civil Service Commission
324,000


11.
Royal Commissions, etc.
200,000

DEFENCE

ROYAL ORDNANCE FACTORIES ESTIMATES, 1965–66

2. That a sum, not exceeding £1,500,000, be granted to Her Majesty to defray the expense of operating the Royal Ordnance Factories, which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March 1966.

DEFENCE (ARMY)

PURCHASING (REPAYMENT) SERVICES ESTIMATES, 1965–66

3. That a sum, not exceeding £2,000,000, be granted to Her Majesty, to defray the expenditure incurred by the Army Department on the supply of munitions, commonuser and other articles for the Government service and on miscellaneous supply, which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March 1966.

DEFENCE (AIR) ESTIMATES, 1965–66

4. That a sum, not exceeding £423,210,000, be granted to Her Majesty, to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March 1966, for expenditure in respect of Air Services, viz.:—


Vote

£


1.
Pay, &amp;c. of the Air Force
140,210,000


2.
Reserve and Auxiliary Services
770,000


7.
Aircraft and Stores
281,000,000


8.
Miscellaneous Effective Services
1,230,000




423,210,000

CIVIL ESTIMATES, SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATES, 1964–65

5. That a further Supplementary sum, not exceeding £69,080,000, be granted to Her Majesty, to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1965, for expenditure in respect of the following Supplementary Estimates:

CIVIL ESTIMATES

CLASS I




£


1.
House of Lords
26,000


2.
House of Commons
429,000


3.
Treasury and Subordinate Departments
452,000


3A.
Department of Economic Affairs
342,000


6.
Customs and Excise
2,207,000


7.
Inland Revenue
2,300,000


8.
Exchequer and Audit Department
78,000


9.
Civil Service Commission
31,000


CLASS II


1.
Foreign Service
2,000


1A.
Diplomatic Service
625,000


2.
Foreign Grants and Loans
1,633,000


4.
Commonwealth Relations Office
1,000


5.
Commonwealth Grants and Loans
3,280,000


6.
Colonial Office
777,000


7.
Colonial Grants and Loans
1,000


9.
Ministry of Overseas Development
1,000


12.
Commonwealth War Graves Commission
2,000

DEFENCE

ROYAL ORDNANCE FACTORIES SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATE, 1965–66

6. That a Supplementary sum, not exceeding £1,700,000, be granted to Her Majesty to defray

DEFENCE (AIR) SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATE, 1964–65

7. That a Supplementary sum, not exceeding £1,000, be granted to Her Majesty, to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1965, for expenditure beyond the sum already provided in the grants for Air Services for the year.

SCHEDULE




Sums not exceeding




Supply Grants
Appropriations in Aid


Vote

£
£


3.
Air Force Department Headquarters
450,000
—


4.
Civilians at Outstations and the Meteorological Office
1,250,000
*—100,000


5.
Movements
Cr.800,000
1,400,000


7.
Aircraft and Stores
Cr.2,099,000
599,000


8.
Lands, Buildings and Works
—
*— 400,000


9.
Miscellaneous Effective Services
100,000
*— 300,000


10.
Non-effective Services
1,100,000
—



Total, Defence (Air) (Supplementary), 1964–65 £
1,000
1,199,000


*Deficit.

CIVIL ESTIMATES (EXCESSES), 1963–64

8. That a sum, not exceeding £832,896 5s. 0d., be granted to Her Majesty, to make good excesses on certain grants for Civil Services, for the year ended on the 31st day of March, 1964.

SCHEDULE


Class and Vote



Excess
Votes



£
s.
d.
£
s.
d.


2. Foreign Grants and Loans








Subhead B.4.—Somali Republic (Grants in Aid):








Excess Expenditure
239
1
7





Less—Net savings available on other subheads
229
1
7









10
0
0


CLASS IV








11. Roads, &amp;c., England and Wales








Excess Expenditure
912,049
4
4





Less—Appropriations in Aid
79,182
19
4









832,866
5
0


CLASS VI








12. Scottish Education Department (Teachers' Superannuation)








Excess Expenditure
44,868
17
0





Less—Appropriations in Aid
44,858
17
0









10
0
0


CLASS XI








3. State Management Districts, Scotland








Excess Expenditure
1,328
6
8





Less—Appropriations in Aid
1,318
6
8









10
0
0


Total, Civil (Excesses) £


£
832,896
5
0

Mr. SPEAKER proceeded, pursuant to Order, to put forthwith with respect to each Resolution the Question, That

the expense of operating the Royal Ordnance Factories, which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March 1965.

this House doth agree with the Committee in that Resolution.

Resolutions agreed to.

SUPPLY [15th March]

Resolutions reported,

DEFENCE (NAVY) ESTIMATES, 1965–66

VOTE 1. PAY, &C., OF THE ROYAL NAVY AND ROYAL MARINES

1. That a sum, not exceeding £86,955,000, be granted to Her Majesty, to defray the expense of the pay, &c. of the Royal Navy and Royal Marines, which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March 1966.

VOTE 4. RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT AND OTHER SCIENTIFIC SERVICES

2. That a sum, not exceeding £27,680,000, be granted to Her Majesty, to defray the expense of scientific services, including a subscription to the International Hydrographic Bureau, which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March 1966.

VOTE 5. MEDICAL SERVICES, EDUCATION AND CIVILIANS ON FLEET SERVICES

3. That a sum, not exceeding £15,492,000, be granted to Her Majesty, to defray the expense on medical services, education and civilians on Fleet services, which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March 1966.

VOTE 9. NON-EFFECTIVE SERVICES

4. That a sum, not exceeding £22,324,000, be granted to Her Majesty, to defray the expense of non-effective services, which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March 1966.

DEFENCE (ARMY) ESTIMATES, 1965–66

VOTE 1. PAY, &C., OF THE ARMY

5. That a sum, not exceeding £166,400,000, be granted to Her Mapesty, to defray the expense of the pay, &c., of the Army, which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March 1966.

VOTE 2. RESERVE FORCES, TERRITORIAL ARMY AND CADET FORCES

6. That a sum, not exceeding £24,140,000, be granted to Her Majesty, to defray the expense of the Reserve Forces (to a number not exceeding 130,000, all ranks, including a number not exceeding 125,000 other ranks), Territorial Army (to a number not exceeding 199,000, all ranks) and Cadet Forces, which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1966.

VOTE 8. MISCELLANEOUS EFFECTIVE SERVICES

7. That a sum, not exceeding £5,000,000, be grantee to Her Majesty, to defray the expense of miscellaneous effective services, including grants in aid, which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1966.

VOTE 9. NON-EFFECTIVE SERVICES

8. That a sum, not exceeding £35,840,000, be granted to Her Majesty, to defray the expense of non-effective services, including a grant in aid, which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1966.

Mr. SPEAKER proceeded, pursuant to Order, to put forthwith with respect to each Resolution the Question, That this House doth agree with the Committee in the said Resolution.

Resolutions agreed to.

SUPPLY [8th March]

Resolution reported,

DEFENCE (ARMY) ESTIMATES,1965–66

VOTE A. NUMBER OF LAND FORCES

That a number of Land Forces, not exceeding 237,800, all ranks, be maintained for the safety of the United Kingdom and the defence of the possessions of Her Majesty's Crown, during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1966.

Mr. SPEAKER proceeded, pursuant to Order, to put forthwith the Question, That this House doth agree with the Committee in the said Resolution.

Question agreed to.

SUPPLY [10th March]

Resolution reported,

DEFENCE (AIR)ESTIMATES, 1965–66

VOTE A. NUMBER FOR AIR FORCE SERVICE

That a number of Officers, Airmen and Airwomen, not exceeding 136,000, all ranks, be maintained for Air Force Service, during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1966.

Mr. SPEAKER proceeded, pursuant to Order, to put forthwith the Question, That this House doth agree with the Committee in the said Resolution.

Question agreed to.

SUPPLY [11th March]

Resolution reported,

DEFENCE (NAVY) ESTIMATES, 1965–66

VOTE A. NUMBERS

That 104,000 Officers, Ratings and Royal Marines be maintained for Naval Service, for the year ending on the 31st day of March 1966.

Mr. SPEAKER proceeded, pursuant to Order, to put forthwith the Question, That this House doth agree with the Committee in the said Resolution.

Question agreed to.

WAYS AND MEANS [17th March]

Resolutions reported,

1. That, towards making good the Supply granted to Her Majesty for the service of the year ended on the 31st day of March 1964, the sum of £832,896 5s. be granted out of the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom.
2. That, towards making good the Supply granted to Her Majesty for the service of the year ending on the 31st day of March 1965, the sum of £70,781,000 be granted out of the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom.
3. That, towards making good the Supply granted to Her Majesty for the service of the year ending on the 31st day of March 1966, the sum of £2,726,447,800 be granted out of the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom.

Resolutions agreed to.

Bill ordered to be brought in upon the said Resolutions by the Chairman of Ways and Means, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Mr. MacDermot.

CONSOLIDATED FUND (No. 2)

Bill to apply certain sums out of the Consolidated Fund to the service of the years ending on 31st March, 1964, 1965 and 1966, presented accordingly and read the First time; to be read a Second time Tomorrow and to be printed. [Bill 103.]

ADJOURNMENT

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Bowden.]

HOUSING (MILNER HOLLAND REPORT)

3.58 p.m.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I am sure that hon. Members on both sides of the House will feel it right and appropriate that we should take a Supply day to discuss this extremely important and most interesting Report. Having had the opportunity to read it, I can repeat with greater emphasis the agreement which I indicated with the expression of gratitude to the Committee by the Minister of Housing and Local Government when he made his statement 10 days ago.
I can do this with particular pleasure, for one reason. As the House knows—and I must formally declare an interest—I am concerned as a member of the board of a company having interests in property, and I am glad to reflect that the very able joint managing director of that company served throughout as a member of the Committee.
Those of us who have read the Report are immensely impressed with the care, skill and attention which the very distinguished team appointed two years ago by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-East (Sir K. Joseph) have given to the subject. We are also both impressed and grateful at the speed with which they have conducted so thorough and detailed a review.
We are also impressed by the admirable language of the Report, so different from the ghastly jargon of Whitehall to which, whatever be the Government, we in this House are accustomed in official documents. The classic example was, I think, the publication by the Ministry of Labour which stated in solemn terms that approximately half the married people in this country were women.
We can take the debate, as the House wishes, in one of two ways. We can take it as a party battle. There is in this subject, obviously, plenty of political ammunition. Hon. Members opposite can, as some of them have already done outside, point out that the abuses, which the Report most vividly reports and also puts in proportion, took place under Conservative Governments and Conservative Ministers of Housing and Local Government. If we take it this way, my right hon. And


hon. Friends would be equally entitled to bring forward the argument that these things happened under local housing authorities which are almost without exception controlled by the party opposite.
If we take it that way, we shall at the end of the day reach the situation which some of us remember being described, with that grin which many of us affectionately remember, by the late Lord Morrison of Lambeth as "A good time has been had by all". Those who were Members when Lord Morrison led the House will remember that he ended many stormy debates in that cheerful and agreeable way.
It would be a pity, if I may without presumption say so, that we should treat in that way this Supply day which we have put at the disposal of the House. For my part, I should like to take the Report and, faced by the facts disclosed in it, faced by the situation in London which it so clearly sets out, see what measure of agreement is possible as to specific measures to deal with the specific and real problem of London housing.
Before I do that, there are two things to be got out of the way. One of them is the Prime Minister. During the course of his speech at Huyton a few days ago, the right hon. Gentleman, whose speech was full of just that sort of prejudice against landlords as a class which the Report so impressively rebukes, said, in referring to the appointment of the Committee by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-East, that it was done
as a result of a debate we forced on them, a debate on Rachmanism".
The Rachman debate took place on 22nd July, 1963. It is true that the Committee was formally appointed in the following month of August. If, however, the Prime Minister had looked at the Report, which he thought he might use for political ammunition, and got as far as the first page he would have seen there an extract foreshadowing the appointment of the Committee from the White Paper which my right hon. Friend laid in February, 1963, four months before the Rachman debate.
I say that only because I want to make it clear that we have been quite consistent in our concern with this matter:

first, with the appointment of the Committee—and, I think the House will agree, an effective, expert and highly intelligent Committee; secondly, with the statement made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-East in the last debate on housing in the old Parliament in July, 1964; and, more recently, in our election manifesto, when we said:
Additional safeguards for tenants will be provided if shown to be necessary by the inquiry into rented housing in London".
The second point which I want to get out of the way is that the Report relates to Greater London, and to Greater London only. That point is made on the second page of the Report, and I will quote it:
First, it is a report about Greater London, and not about any other part of the country. Accordingly, any attempt to draw inferences from it as to the situation outside the London area would be wholly unjustified, since conclusions drawn by such a method would be unsupported by any evidence.
I understand that the Minister of Housing and Local Government, who is to follow me, regards this debate as a kind of overture to the Bill which he is to introduce in a short time, and which was mentioned in the Gracious Speech, in respect of rent control. We will discuss that Bill when we come to it and, no doubt, there will be plenty to discuss. I only say now that in the light of the words from the Report which I have just quoted, it would not be open to the Minister to find any justification for the imposition of rent control outside London on the basis of this Report. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] I remind hon. Members opposite, who seem to doubt that, what the members of the Committee themselves say, that
any attempt to draw inferences from it as to the situation outside the London area would be wholly unjustified, since conclusions drawn by such a method would be unsupported by any evidence.
That is clear enough.

Mr. William Molloy: Does not that infer that there is need for such an examination in the rest of the country as this one which has been done for London?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: If that is the inference, it would be interesting to know whether the Minister and his hon. Friends were prepared to conduct that examination before or after they introduced legislation on the subject.

Mr. Frank Allaun: Mr. Frank Allaun (Salford, East) rose—

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I am sorry, I have already given way.
I therefore propose to discuss this matter in the light of the warning given by the Report that it is legitimate and proper to base upon the Report arguments as to what should be done in London—indeed, that is the very object of this debate—but that any attempt to use it as an excuse for an extension of rent control throughout the country would be completely unjustified and has been found so to be by the members of the Committee.

Sir Barnett Janner: rose—

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: Let me finish the sentence and I will, of course, give way to the hon. Member.
It would also be contrary to commonsense, because I do not know when the Minister obtained the Report, but the intention to introduce a general Bill was announced, as I have said, in the Gracious Speech.

Sir B. Janner: Is the right hon. Gentleman really suggesting that if facts which are contained in the Report can be proved to be similar to facts which prevail in other parts of the country, no one has a right to utilise the decisions, the results or the consequences which arise from those facts?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: The hon. Member began that intervention with the hypothetical "if". All I am saying is that, in the words of the Committee, the state of affairs in London is an arguable basis for legislative change, which is what I shall talk about, but that it is quite clear, and made explicitly clear, both in the passage which I have quoted and in another passage towards the end of the Report, that the Report as it stands is confined to London and is relevant to measures taken in London and nowhere else.
The Report is a fascinating study. It is a study of the problems of an enormous city, richer, larger, more attractive to migrants than ever before; a city with a high birth rate, good work and high wages; a city with high prosperity, with the consequence that many of its citizens

can, and will, pay high for accommodation.
The Report gives little comfort—because I am dealing with it from a practical point of view—to the simplist doctrinaires at either extreme. It does not attribute, as I see it, this trouble either to those who say there has been too much control or to those who say there has been too little. It does not really help the doctrinaires who believe that the matter can be resolved solely by the working of the market, or the doctrinaires who believe that the matter can be solved solely by the operation of control. Indeed, as between the doctrinaires it recalls two lines of Canning:
And finds, with keen discriminating sight, Black's not so black—nor white so very white.
It finds that the principal of the main causes is shortage, and of course—the House will forgive me the platitude—it is the overall shortage which is the root and base of the trouble. Abuses, excessive rents, wrong practices all result from the overall shortage. And the shortage itself—and this is, I think, a great part of the interest of the Report—derives from many causes, most of them good, most of them things of which we should be pleased and proud. Indeed, the curious thing is that it does appear that London's housing problem, like coronary thrombosis, is a disease of prosperity.
The other causes listed are these: the rapid growth of employment in London, and the increase, therefore, of numbers of young and single people drawn in by the attraction of a high level of excellent employment; the division of the population more and more into smaller households, younger "marrieds", young people with good earnings able and willing to set up home on their own and not start life with the handicap of a built-in mother-in-law; more old people, to their credit, keeping on their own homes and managing to run them, to a great age in many cases; the effect of slum clearance, and the reduction of densities; increased pressure as a result of the increased capacity to pay which prosperity brings to large sections of the community; and the high standard of living to which in recent years more and more people have become accustomed.
All these are good things. They are in themselves good, and they contribute


very vividly to this problem. I quote again from the Report, from page 204:
To these objective causes of stress there has been added a further subjective element, even harder to measure but nonetheless significant. The percentage increase in net income per head achieved in the United Kingdom during the decade after 1951 was probably as great as the percentage increase achieved between 1914 and 1951. People living or working in London secured a larger share of this increase than people elsewhere in the country.
The practical problem which faces the House, faces the Government, faces, in particular, the right hon. Gentleman the Minister, is how to deal with the problems of these difficult cases without losing the good things which have in some measure, as I have been trying to suggest to the House, contributed to the problem with which we are all faced.
Of course, the only long-term remedy—it is a long-term one—is the construction of a great deal more accommodation, particularly to let, and one of the dangers with which we are faced, one danger which faces the right hon. Gentleman, is that it is only too easy to take short-term measures to deal with difficult individual cases which have the effect of making the long-term provision of more rented accommodation more difficult. The Report describes what has been done, although it does not take account of the substantial building, probably of about 20,000 a year, of houses built outside London for the purpose of accommodating Londoners; but it does, of course, make clear that more housing in London is required.
I put one or two suggestions, and I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will deal with them. I think that in the central areas he will have to go for higher densities by building higher. I appreciate that this means cost. He may have to look at the subsidies again. High building is expensive, but, in the centre of this enormous city, with this great pressure on accommodation, I think that densities will have to be looked at again.

Mr. Reginald Freeson: Bearing in mind that densities in the centre of London are at 200 per acre, what subsidy is the right hon. Gentleman suggesting to the Government?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: It depends on how high we go. We can, if we like, do some mathematical exercises about the

number of floors. All I am saying is that we shall have to build higher and that one of the purposes of building higher will he to enable us to increase densities, while providing decent accommodation, in the central area.
This is, if the hon. Gentleman will reflect, what is being done. My right hon. Friend gave great encouragement to that. One has only to go about Greater London—south-west, for instance, towards my own constituency—to see the very fine blocks of flats, far higher than we were accustomed to seeing a few years ago. All I am suggesting is that we shall have to go further with this.
The right hon. Gentleman must also use the useful inheritance which he had from my right hon. Friend in respect of land for building. The biggest and perhaps the best of this is the Woolwich Arsenal site. I think that the use of that was held up as a result of the intervention of the Minister of Defence for the Royal Navy, but I understand that the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Housing and Local Government has triumphed in that matter.
I hope that he will tell us he is going to get ahead with that. I believe that there is accommodation for about 50,000 people, possibly, on that site, so it is a very important contribution indeed. Then there are Croydon and Hendon airports, railway land, and the development taking place at Erith. All this will be of help and I think that the House would like to hear from the right hon. Gentleman what progress is being made in respect of it.
I then come to one of the major aspects of the Report, its proposal—although I am aware, as the Committee very fairly says, it was not asked to make specific proposals—for the introduction of greater security of tenure for tenants. There is always, in a time of shortage, of acute shortage, a case for control of this sort. That is why, during the course of two wars, a number of Governments of all political colours introduced and maintained varying measures of control operating both in respect of security of tenure and of the level of rents.
As the Committee brings out, it has a valuable effect in giving reassurance to tenants, but the House must face also


the fact that it has compensating disadvantages. It tends to freeze existing holdings; it increases, of course, the difficulty of new arrivals—immigrants, young couples, people coming in for the first time; unless it provides for rents to be fixed near the market level, it tends to dry up the supply of rented accommodation because landlords who come into possession prefer to sell to owner-occupiers rather than to relet; and, of course, it discourages other people from investing their money in the provision of accommodation to let.

Mr. B. T. Parkin: Does the right hon. Gentleman not yet realise this about security of tenure, that although, originally, the evils he sets out arise, once it has become universal then mobility will he restored to people, because they will be as secure in their next dwelling as they were in the last?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I do not think that the hon. Gentleman, whose interest in this subject I recognise, can have been following what I was saying. What I was saying when I gave way to his intervention was that one of the compensating disadvantages—I am trying to deal with this as objectively and as fairly as I can—of control was that it did discourage landlords from maintaining property as let or from building property to let. I intend to enlarge on that point perhaps a little later, at some greater length, but I would have thought that the hon. Gentleman would have accepted as a fact, however disagreeable, that no course, whatever we do in this House, is free from disadvantages. It is an advantage of this House of Commons that we try to weigh the advantages, and the House will recall that I have said that in my view there are some disadvantages.
There is a further one, which is that, while control of this kind does protect those people who are in, it makes it more difficult for those who are trying to get in. It is a nicely balanced question. Indeed, it may well be the case that, just as in the case of some serious diseases doctors apply a remedy to save the life of the patient in the short-run, even though it may do damage in the long run, the Committee evidently felt that, faced with the present situation of shortage as it has developed—for the

reasons which the Committee gives and on which I have tried to give to the House—in the circumstances some additional security of tenure is required.
If the Government accept this recommendation and treat it as being justified by the London situation, I think that the attitude of most thinking people to their so doing will depend on what steps they take to counter the ill-effects to which I have referred. There are certain steps which, if taken, could at any rate mitigate the difficulties which the imposition of control can cause.
One is the expansion of the level at which rents are fixed. We cannot have security of tenure without rent control. Should rents be fixed near the market level or a long way below? The willingness of landlords to continue to provide accommodation will be affected very much by the level at which the Minister fixes rents. Many people will, I think, judge whether this is being used to deal with an emergency, or as part of a wider political concept, by where the limit is put. The Report says clearly that there is no shortage of accommodation in London above the level of rents of £400 or £500 a year
.
There is the question, to which the Report devotes a great deal of space, whether to compensate or counterbalance the bad effect on the provision of accommodation resulting from control, compensating fiscal or other financial adjustments, such as are made in other countries, should be made. I appreciate that we have not the Bill before us today, so I cannot ask the right hon. Gentleman to answer this afternoon, but if he comes forward with proposals for reimposing a further measure of control in London to give security of tenure—which I grant that the Committee favours—we shall want to know whether he is taking the steps that I have mentioned, and others, which could mitigate in a considerable measure the difficulties which such proposals otherwise would cause.

Mr. S. C. Silkin: I should like to elucidate what the right hon. Gentleman means when he refers, as he has done twice, to the market level of rents and suggests that the level should be as close as possible to the market level—I think that I have understood him


correctly so far. Does he mean by the market level that level of rent introduced by acute housing scarcity?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I mean the level—this is a matter which, as the hon. and learned Gentleman will know, is difficult of definition—I have in mind the level which gives a fair return to the landlord for the money invested in the property, without involving any element of exploitation of scarcity. That is the best definition I can give "off the cuff". It is, in fact, a sensible commercial rent excluding the additional amount resulting from scarcity.
There is another proposal involving legislation, and that is the suggestion of the introduction into our criminal law of a provision in the law of the City of New York. One would not suspect that city of undue Left-wing deviationism, and the suggestion is interesting. I should have thought that the abuses outlined in the Report must in most cases be breaches of our existing law. I find it difficult to see why the kind of action attributed to this minority of landlords could not be brought before the courts under the existing law. If the law is inadequate to prevent this kind of thing, I do not think that many of us would wish to quarrel with the right hon. Gentleman if he brings forward coherent proposals for strengthening the criminal law in this respect.
We would like to hear the advice that he had from the Law Officers whether the suggestion by the Committee of the adoption of the New York provision would make our criminal law more efficient. No one wishes to create crimes for the sake of doing so. Equally, no one justifies, or would wish to see continued, the type of practices referred to in the Report. The practical question—it is perhaps, above all, a question for lawyers—is whether it is practicable and reasonable to strengthen our criminal law on those lines. I should like to hear what the right hon. Gentleman has to say about that.
The Report is most emphatic about the need to solve this problem by the combined efforts of all three agencies in this field, the local authorities, the housing associations and the private landlords—all three. Great emphasis is put on that and I wish to remind the right hon.

Gentleman that the Report is quite emphatic, in a passage with which I have no doubt he is familiar, on page 223, in expressing the view that it is impossible to solve this problem for many years without the help of the private landlord.
I was very sorry, in those circumstances, to note that the right hon. Gentleman—no doubt in the heady by-election atmosphere of Great Dunmow—apparently rejected the idea, so far as building was concerned, that the private developer should play his part. If the right hon. Gentleman takes that line, he is flying straight in the face of the Report which, and not only in the passage to which I have invited his attention—I shall not quote it unless he wishes, it is rather long—is absolutely emphatic that this problem will be solved only by the use of all three agencies.
Chapter 3 of the Report points out the financial handicap which our present system of taxation imposes on some of these agencies. Local authorities are reasonably well placed with their subsidies. A person who buys for owner-occupation is reasonably well placed, with his tax concession. The housing association, unless it happens to be a charity, and the private developer who builds to rent come out—as the Report brings out clearly—very badly from the fiscal point of view. Most of us would welcome the fact that an owner-occupier gets a fiscal stimulus. Most of us regard owner-occupation as so socially valuable as to be worth a great deal of support and help, but it is clear, on the figures given in Chapter 3, that those who build to rent either have to charge a higher rent than most of the people for whom they build can afford, or not get a fair return on their money because of the incidence of tax on them, an incidence which is quite different from that falling on the owner-occupier, on the one hand, or the local authority, on the other.
The imposition of further controls would obviously accentuate that, and so, if I may refer to a gloomy subject, would the raising—on which we have already voted—of the standard rate of Income Tax from 7s. 9d. to 8s. 3d. early next month. It is interesting to note that the calculations which the Committee makes are based only on the 7s. 9d. rate and obviously the situation would be more difficult with a rate of 8s. 3d.

Mr. Eric Lubbock: Does the right hon. Gentleman think that the enormous difference between what one might call an economic rent that the private landlord charges on this hypothetical new property, which costs£3,750 to build, and the qualifications on the housing associations and local authorities as he has described would appear in Chapter 3 of the Report, really arises entirely from the difference in tax between the local authorities and private landlords? If not, would not any help given to them on taxation lower the limit beyond which private landlords could make a contribution, but not so far as to bring into their network those people on low incomes, and who have large families, and whose need is greatest?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: The Report makes clear, in a passage which I will find shortly for the hon. Gentleman, that it is, in fact, taxation which makes it difficult for the private developer to let at rents which people with lower means can pay.
The passage—I commend it to the hon. Gentleman—is on page 34:
The disadvantage of this tax situation is not only that the tax element immediately makes the rents higher than the poorest families can afford, but the yearly tax increase means that the rents must continually rise.
I believe that the hon. Gentleman is, no doubt inadvertently, wrong in putting housing associations on the other, or more favoured, side of the fence. In fact, housing associations, other than those which are in strict law charities, suffer the same tax burden as the private developer. There is a very powerful passage in the Report pointing out that this is completely anomalous. I shall come to that in a moment.
Housing associations are divided between those which are, in law, charities—they are comparatively limited in numbers—and those which are not. As the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Lubbock) has raised the matter, I should say that the Report is perfectly clear and emphatic on the point:
We find it difficult to see any rational explanation for this division in the housing association effort, or how charitable status is relevant to the effort which is needed by public and voluntary agencies to meet the need for family houses and flats in London. Nor can we see any convincing reason for the relief from taxation granted to one

association and withheld from another when each is providing comparable dwellings at comparable rents. The matter is more perplexing when co-ownership associations, which are likely to be building for those with higher incomes, are given the same favourable treatment for tax purposes as are charitable associations.
I hope that that makes the position clear.

Mr. Lubbock: If I may—

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I really must get on.
The trouble derives from the out-of-date Inland Revenue view that a house lasts for ever and that there is no need to allow depreciation for tax purposes. As a consequence, when either a housing association or a private developer borrows money—as it does—to build a house, the money which it draws from its rents to repay that capital secures no relief whatever from tax. My right hon. Friend the Member for Barnet (Mr. Maudling) did a very great service to certain areas a couple of years ago by introducing in them a system of free depreciation, a system under which investment could be written off at the discretion of the taxpayer.
I doubt whether, except perhaps in some of what the report calls "the special areas", it would be necessary to go so far as this in London. On the other hand, some recognition by the Revenue that houses do deteriorate, and that the developer is entitled to write them off, could have a beneficial effect on the provision of houses to let in London by the majority of housing associations and by private developers.
This is traditionally the rutting season for Chancellors of the Exchequer. I hope that the Minister of Housing will be prepared to make representations to his right hon. Friend to see whether something can be done. The Report is very emphatic on this point and devotes a great deal of attention to it. In my view it is a very powerful case for an improvement in the tax treatment of those who build to let.

Mr. Frank Allaun: Does not that argument apply equally the other way? If the house is depreciating, should not the landlord think of reducing the rent, which he never does, instead of increasing it, as he does?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: Of course he does. The hon. Member is helping my argument, and the Committee's argument. The Committee makes the point that where a landlord raises further capital to make improvements on the house, he is forced to raise the rent substantially to pay for those improvements, because when he repays the money which he has raised for this purpose, it is subjected to the full rigours of tax—7s. 9d. at the moment and subsequently to be 8s. 3d. The hon. Gentleman is making my point.
1 would ask the House to recall a matter to which the Committee devoted a great deal of attention. Those hon. Members who have praised the Committee's Report—I was one—cannot ignore the very powerful case which it makes on this point. Indeed, in Chapter 12, where we are told about foreign practice, the Committee carries the matter even further. It points out that the greatest success in dealing with housing has been in those European cities which have used the private sector to the full. It points out that in those cities a quite different practice to ours has been followed. The private sector has been used very fully. It has been subject to a considerable measure of control—which hon. Gentlemen opposite will no doubt approve—but, in compensation for that, has received subsidies, so that it has been possible to obtain a fair return on the money invested in housing.
It is not good enough to dismiss this kind of thing in the light of the evidence. which the Committee went to great trouble to obtain, about what was done in foreign cities. The fact remains that the high measure of security of tenure—for example, in Sweden, which has been Socialist for many years—is balanced, so far as the private developer is concerned. by the grant of subsidies. It is interesting to see that, in Sweden, great emphasis is put on the desirability of having four "centres of initiative" as the Committee calls them, for the provision of houses to let—local authorities, co-operatives, the State and private developers. Great importance is attached to having all four in operation.
Therefore, though no one who has served in the Treasury breathes the word "subsidy" without a certain shudder, it may well be that if further restrictions are thought right to be imposed on landlords

in London, and if the House accepts the Committee's view that it is only by keeping the private sector in operation that the problem will be solved, the least expensive course in the end may well be to consider some help in that way. [Laughter.]
It is all very well for hon. Gentlemen opposite to laugh. What I am recalling to them is the practice of a number of our European friends, by no means all of them under Right-wing Governments. I think that, with respect, the right hon. Gentleman has only to appreciate that if we accept the Committee's reasoning, we are forced to something of this sort. The Committee says clearly and in terms that the problem will not be solved without the aid of the private sector.
If it is felt necessary, because of the shortage, to impose restrictions which are, of themselves and taken by themselves, discouraging to the private sector in providing accommodation to let, are we not forced into considering, first of all, a tax system which works against the very people whom we want to encourage and, if that be insufficient, some measure of subsidy? One cannot dismiss the practice of a great many advanced European countries which have adopted just this practice.
I do not ask the right hon. Gentleman to do more today than to indicate—as I hope he will—that he sees that the private sector has a rôle to play not only in repairing and modernising, but in building houses. I hope that he will make it clear that his Great Dunmow speech does not involve a flat rejection of the Committee's recommendation in this respect. On the contrary, I hope that he will show that the private sector has a cause for confidence, that good landlords who play fair by their tenants will receive fair treatment from the Government. The main trouble in the provision of rented accommodation in this country has been the feeling that if one invests one's money in the provision of rented accommodation one is likely to be somewhat roughly treated, at any rate when right hon. Gentlemen opposite come into power.
Those of us who want to see this matter settled want to see it settled by the use, as the Committee suggests, of all the three instruments. We sincerely want to see allayed this feeling of disquiet


in the minds of those who could invest in the provision of rented accommodation. I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman does. I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman does not want to lose any possible instrument in the task in which he is engaged. He is in a very good position now, by showing some understanding of this aspect, to restore confidence in those who can provide this large stock of rented housing. It lies in his hands. He is in a very good position to do it if he is prepared to abandon the old attitude of his party under which all landlords are pariahs and it does not matter how one treats them, and come to the attitude which the Committee so objectively and fairly put forward, that landlords have their part, and an important part, to play.

Mr. Albert Evans: Would the right hon. Gentleman agree that the adoption of any proposals such as he has outlined would involve control of rent levels charged by private landlords?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: Of course. The whole system on the Continent which I have been trying to describe involves that, because there is a balance between the imposition of controls on rent and assistance to those providing the accommodation. They are the two sides of the equation. I am sorry if I did not succeed in making that clear.

Mr. David Weitzman: rose—

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I cannot give way again; I must go on.
It lies with the right hon. Gentleman to restore some confidence in this part of the sector. The right hon. Gentleman knows, and the Report makes clear, that the great majority of landlords are perfectly honourable and honest people and that they dislike as much as any hon. Member the malpractices of a minority. Indeed, whatever the right hon. Gentleman does to deal with the malpractices, he will make it much more effective if he carries with him, as he could, the good will of all decent landlords, who are just as anxious as he is, perhaps more anxious, to see any abuses of this kind rooted out. But the right hon. Gentleman has to show, if he is

to take this line, a certain courage in abandoning old ideas about landlords which many of his party hold.
The Report itself brings out the fact that many landlords are small people of modest means. It brings out that 60 per cent. of London's landlords own one house each. Many hon. Members know cases where a few houses are the sole support of elderly people. They probably do not play a very great part in the economic development that I have been talking about or in the greater development of housing. They are, however, people who are entitled, I hope the right hon. Gentleman will agree, to a fair deal.
I have been receiving in the last few weeks a number of letters from people so placed. I will not weary the House with those letters, but I could show them to the right hon. Gentleman. I stress that the right hon. Gentleman will not succeed unless he carries successfully with him the private sector, and he is particularly fortunately placed for carrying it with him if he wishes and if he will take that line.
I remind the House of the final recommendation of the Report on page 228:
Finally, we believe that what, above all, is needed for the remedy of London's ills is a common frame of mind. Housing has for too long been the sport of political prejudice. The need now is for a common approach to the problem and for a fully considered development of policy based on an understanding of the whole housing situation and purged of irrelevant prejudice against landlords, tenants or any other groups of the population. The housing problems confronting London, as they confront other great cities, will not be resolved by market forces or by the provision of more houses alone; they are of a long-term, perhaps permanent nature. We hope that our survey will have helped to identify them and that there will be an agreement on the measures needed for their solution and a common will to see that the measures are applied.

Mr. Weitzman: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: Not at this stage, because I am trying to put to the House the very serious appeal which the Committee made to all of us. It is a spirit that I have tried to follow in my speech.
I know that all of us have prejudices in this matter which we sometimes rationalise into principles, but, all the same, we shall not resolve this problem


of London if we insist on stirring up and reviving old controversies. This is an immensely important, human problem which some of us have known, and which certainly I have known since I was acquainted with Limehouse in the years before the war, when I saw conditions which, thank God, have disappeared for ever.
This is a problem which we want to see resolved in the spirit of the Report. The right hon. Gentleman has a great opportunity. He can, if he wishes, turn this into a matter of controversy, and if he does, we shall meet it. He can, on the other hand, deal with it as a specific problem which should be tackled, as the Committee has suggested, without irrelevant prejudice, as a practical problem to deal with very real and pressing human needs. If the right hon. Gentleman takes that line, he will not find Her Majesty's Opposition unhelpful.

4.46 p.m.

The Minister of Housing and Local Government (Mr. Richard Crossman): I was curious to see how the right hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) would deal with the very delicate situation in which he was placed by the decision of his right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-East (Sir K. Joseph) to establish the Milner Holland Committee and by the Report which that Committee has published.
It is obvious, as the right hon. Gentleman made only too clear in his speech, that any kind of party political approach would have been fraught with disaster. The debate had to be got over under the most favourable circumstances. I noticed, with appreciation of it, the parliamentary skill with which a day was given by the Opposition and so given that no vote could be taken. That was wise, because if the Opposition had put down a Motion to take note of this Report, we should have put down an Amendment which would have deeply embarrassed them if they had tried to vote against it. So there were obvious reasons for doing it this way.
There were obvious reasons, also, for stressing the argument that the Report should be discussed only with the strictest relationship to London. I think that what Sir Milner Holland says is quite true, that his Report is strictly, as an

analysis, valid only for London and that it would be unwise to draw deductions about conditions outside London from descriptions of conditions inside London. The drift to the South-East has produced a world of difference between the housing problems in the areas of rapid growth like London and the Midlands and those of the great cities of the North.
There is another reason for caution. Each of the great cities faced with problems of security of tenure and housing shortage, problems common to all the great conurbations, has grappled with them in a different way. One has only to compare how Leeds has handled the problem with how it has been handled in Birmingham or Liverpool to realise that what the right hon. Gentleman said is true, that one should know not only about London but about the rest of the country.
It is also true—I shall say something about this later—that people who were 13 years in government and left us without any knowledge of a reliable sort about the subject such as we get from the Milner Holland Committee have no right to demand that because the information has been denied for years, the evil has to continue until six more investigations take place. That is not at all what we are going to do in dealing with the problem.
I observe that apart from this close attention to seeing this as a specific and unique London problem, we also have to see it from a strictly non-party point of view. Long before he rose here, the right hon. Gentleman was addressing the Conservative Local Government Conference last week. Already, there he was endorsing Sir Milner's plea for a policy purged of irrelevant prejudice, a plea reinforced by a muted thunderclap from Printing House Square. I am not quite sure what Sir Milner Holland meant by the original complaint, but I must admit that its endorsement by the right hon. Gentleman and the editor of The Times fills me with the gravest suspicion.
When I heard the right hon. Gentleman recommending a non-party approach and telling us not to stir up old controversies, I could only draw, because I know him well, one conclusion, which is that in terms of party politics the investigations of this Committee and the study of its Report can be nothing but a devastating disaster to the Opposition.
Just imagine if the Report had given, as it was hoped, a commendation to the policies of the previous Administration. Would we then have heard the right hon. Gentleman say that the House must put it all behind it, that we must eschew party politics and old controversies? The right hon. Gentleman is an old party politician and he knows that one talks in this way when in a fix. He did his best and I congratulate him, but I must say that ever since we took office hon. Members opposite have been busy avoiding responsibility for the difficulties which we have to grasp and denying that these difficulties are legacies which we inherited from them.
The responsibility for the London housing crisis and for the miseries caused by the Rent Act in every one of our great conurbations is something which hon. Members opposite cannot wriggle out of now that the Report is published. Here we have it, the sober, impartial and annihilating analysis of how the tenants in London's privately rented properties have fared under 13 years of Tory rule, seven of them after the Rent Act came into effect.
Although housing can never be removed from the centre of party politics it is certainly possible to endorse Sir Milner's plea for "housing policies purged of prejudice." I watched the right hon. Gentleman opposite and I did not see any attempt to remove the beam from his own eye in order to see the mote in mine. There did not seem to be much removing of prejudice. He took only the points which favoured his prejudices and asked us then to remove ours.
I will talk about landlordism. The right hon. Gentleman is quite right. One of the central problems of the Report is how to handle private landlords after 13 years of Tory administration attempting to handle them. I thought that the non-political atmosphere was carried a little far when the right hon. Gentleman attacked the tax system as if he had forgotten that he was Chief Secretary to the Treasury running the tax system and that he was Financial Secretary eight years before. So the right hon. Gentleman has had 13 years to help the landlords and to give them a fair deal and to try to win their support.
The right hon. Gentleman now tells me that it is my chance. I accept the challenge. Let me tell him that I have a natural prejudice against landlords. I share it with many hon. and right hon. Members on this side of the House. Let me also say this to him. This prejudice is so strong in large sections of the community that many Labour supporters jumped to the conclusion that the Rachman story was typical of the behaviour of the big landlords and that they were the villains of the piece. It is perfectly true also that Sir Milner, after careful investigation, acquits not only large numbers of landlords of sensational forms of persecution and exploitation, but tells us that, on the whole, the big landlords are, as far as he can see, the least guilty in this regard and that most of the abuses are to be found among the small landlords, often abusing tenants in their own houses.
Without qualification, I accept that Sir Milner and his Committee have given us an objective and correct picture of the abuses. According to Sir Milner and the members of his Committee there are still, at a minimum, 3,000 cases of vile abuse a year. Let us also agree with the Committee that the abuses, the sensational thing about the landlords, are not what we ought to look at. What we have to study is the underlying trouble in dealing with all private rented property. I agree that it is absurd and also bad theology to think that it is due to original sin in a class of people called landlords. We have to look, therefore, and try to find out what is wrong. This is something which the right hon. Gentleman hardly mentioned. He managed to skirt round those chapters of the Report.
There is something desperately wrong with private landlordism today. Sir Milner shows that misery, vile conditions, overcrowding and persecution by landlords are virtually limited to private rented property. There are no complaints about owner-occupation and council estates. It is only in this realm of private landlordism that all these evils occur. It is not due to original sin on the part of the landlords, so, then, it is due to something underneath. Will the right hon. Gentleman say whether he agrees with me and whether I am right about Sir Milner's account of the cause? He says that we can attribute


it to one simple fact. The service which the landlords provide, cheap-rented housing, is at once unprofitable and in short supply. Before the First World War the provision of working-class housing at working-class rents was an extremely profitable business even for the good landlord; it has become in the last 40 years extremely unprofitable.
Flats at £400 a year or more are still money spinners, and here there is still a free market where the laws of supply and demand can operate and the respectable landlord can earn a fortune. But further down the social scale the only way to make a quick living out of widowers' houses is to scamp the repairs and exploit the tenants' desperate fear of eviction. Hence the willingness of a minority of landlords to exploit and to persecute. Hence the determination of the majority who are not bullies or exploiters to get out of the business altogether by selling their houses and so very often turning the luckless tenant into a reluctant owner-occupier saddled with a decaying liability.
Most of these little landlords, Sir Milner tells us, are perfectly decent people who are desperate because they cannot get any return on the money they invested or the houses they inherited. But then, let me repeat, whose fault is it that this suffering and misery goes on? If the landlords are victims of the system—the housing policies and the tax arrangements under which rented property has been managed for the last 10 years—then the burden is placed fairly and squarely on the politicians responsible for those policies and tax arrangements. It is they who must be prepared to "purge their minds of irrelevant prejudice" and abandon the excuses which they have used for the conditions they have tolerated.
But if it is not the fault of the landlord, whose fault is it that this suffering and misery in rented property has continued for 13 years of Tory administration, and which the party opposite pledged to put right? The answer he gives is that if the landlords are not guilty, the politicians are guilty through their housing policy and tax policy. If they are, can the right hon. Gentleman tell us that he and his colleagues, after 13 years, do not bear some responsibility for what happened during that period?
In one very telling passage the Committee lists what it describes as "four hypotheses" which have been advanced as the cause of London's housing crisis: (a) the deadening effect of rent restriction—we have heard that one; (b) the inefficient use of local authority housing—we have heard that one too; (c) immigration; (d) unused housing standing empty. These, he says, are the four legends and he tells us that there is no truth in them whatever. How many Conservative and Liberal speeches have we heard in the House during the past 10 years using one or all of these hypotheses to discredit the Government's critics.

Mr. Lubbock: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there were over 40,000 houses vacant in Greater London at the time of the census?

Mr. Crossman: If the hon. Gentleman wants to debate the question of unused accommodation we will certainly do so. A most careful analysis shows that this is not a major issue, and certainly not in council housing. Every time we discussed control and decontrol we heard talk of the deadening effects of rent restriction. The Report explodes this Tory prejudice.
And what about the Tory legend that the housing shortage was due to under-occupation of council houses? This was not quoted by the right hon. Gentleman, although the Committee says:
In London, only local authority tenants, a fifth of all households, are housed without appreciable under-use or over-use of space.
That means that these council estates are the only well-managed rented estates in London. And in another passage of the Report another Tory smear on London council housing is exploded. We read that the household budgets of council house tenants are not above but below those of private tenants. So much for the popular Tory theory that the best way to solve our housing shortage is to get rid of the rich council house tenants with their Jaguar cars so as to make room for the poor and needy.
Then we come to the next explanation of the shortage—immigration, either from the rest of the country or from overseas. The Milner Holland Report is equally incisive about that. It states that the migrant to London, from wherever he


comes, is a victim not a cause of the housing shortage, just as the coloured landlord who persecutes his tenants is often a victim of a clever white man who has sold him a tumbledown house at far above its value. Thus, immigration is proved by the Report to be as bogus an alibi for Tory failures as under-occupation.
Having seen how the Committee destroys all of these Conservative explanations of our housing shortage, I will summarise what the Committee states to be the real situation in London. It is, first, that while the majority of Londoners are better housed than they were 10 years ago, a large and growing minority are living in miserable conditions and in fear of eviction. These people are overwhelmingly the lower-paid workers to whom the building societies will not give mortgages and who, either because they are not eligible or because they cannot wait five or six years for a council house, are compelled to accept what the private landlord can provide in furnished or unfurnished accommodation. The one kind of housing which is in desperately short supply, outside the council estates, is just that accommodation which these lower-paid families or migrants can afford.
The second point is that the Report shows that this shortage of cheap rented housing was needlessly aggravated by my predecessors' housing policy, with its exclusive concentration on owner-occupation and slum clearance. How often was it said that the housing shortage had been overcome? How often did they try to prove this by quoting national figures, stating that the number of units of accommodation now exceeded the number of family units in need of accommodation? I do not think that there was ever a time when national averages were used more misleadingly or when global figures proved such globalloney.
It should be made clear that it is no good building houses for people unless they are the right houses in the right place and at the right price. Let us consider the facts. In 1961, the South-East Study had already estimated that 150,000 London households lacked accommodation and that 1 million Londoners would have to acquire homes

outside London by 1980. Now, after a fuller investigation, Sir Milner Holland reports that conditions have worsened. Not 150,000 London households but 190,000 are in urgent need and another 61,000 single persons are living in accommodation without sinks or stoves. That is the shortage after 13 years of Tory housing policy.
If that were not bad enough, what makes it far more grievous is that most of these people who cannot have houses are far too poor to think of becoming members of a property-owning democracy and buying houses. The only kind of housing they can afford is rented, and this is precisely the kind of housing which the Tories have been busily destroying in London all these years. All over London private developers have been demolishing old houses previously let at controlled rents and replacing them with blocks of flats at £300 or £400 a year. Theoretically, this may increase the stock of available housing, but actually it has made the housing crisis far worse than it was before.
If any hon. Member does not believe this I urge him to read Appendix VI of the Report which, ironically, the Committee describes as an appendix on rehabilitation. It is concerned, first, with Shepherds Bush, the neighbourhood where Rachman operated. Of course, it has been "improved" out of all recognition, but the result has been to change it from a working-class to a middle-class area. The developers, of whom we heard so much from the right hon. Gentleman, felt no obligation to the 1,200 people who lived there before. And as for the local authority—and although it was a Labour local authority it should be blamed—in the words of the Report,
…they are unable to rehouse anyone from the estate, and the redevelopment will result in all the 1,200 persons living there now having to find accommodation elsewhere.
The Report shows that when cheap rented housing is demolished it is never replaced. It states—and this is one of those interesting points in the Report which the right hon. Gentleman did not quote:
We obtained no evidence that any private landlord was building flats or houses to let at net rents below £400 per annum. We did, however, obtain evidence from one company


who intended to redevelop land in West London by building shops and residential flats. However, they intended to sell the flats to the local authority at cost and obtain a return or their investment from the shops alone.
The result of all this is perfectly obvious; a disastrous reduction in the stock of private rented housing. That is what we are suffering from in London today and, it should be added, in the nation as a whole.
In the nation as a whole, my Ministry reckons that since the introduction of the Rent Act—that great Measure for conserving property—the figure for private rented housing has sunk from just over 5 million to about 3¾ million. That is a 25 per cent. decrease in the total stock of rented housing. The figures for London are roughly in scale; an annual loss since 1960 of 4 per cent. In fact, during the whole 13 years of Tory rule the type of housing in shortest supply—private rented accommodation—was disappearing without replacement.

Mr. F. V. Corfield: The right hon. Gentleman is quoting some interesting figures, but can he tell us anything about the rate at which this private property was running down? Is it not a fact that since the Rent Act it has been running down at a somewhat lower rate than it was before?

Mr. Crossman: It is a great misfortune to leave a Ministry and also leave the figures behind. I have the figures and later I will return to the subject. I assure the hon. Gentleman that it is running down catastrophically.
Obviously, the job of replacing rented housing should be taken over by local authorities and, obviously, it should have been made their top priority. But what was our predecessors' attitude to local authority building? Here are the facts. In the early 1950s, Mr. Macmillan and his Government were out for 300,000 houses. In 1954, public authorities built 257,000 out of 348,000 new houses in Great Britain. Ever since, year after year, down, down, down. In 1955, the figure was 204,000, out of 317,000. In 1956, the figure was 176,000; in 1958 it was 146,000; in 1960 it was 129,000 and in 1961 it was 119,000.
Then came the election prospect and the figure was 156,000. If the party opposite had won it would have been

down again. Even last year, with the election in prospect, the figure was only 156,000 in total, or less than had been built in 1948 under Aneurin Bevan. That is the record of housing in the nation as a whole. It shows what has been done in the face of the urgent need for rented accommodation at moderate rents.
Let us consider the figures for London and the way in which they have declined. In 1955, 19,000 were built out of a total of 31,000; in 1956, 17,000 out of 28,000; 1959, 14,000 out of 26,000 and in 1961, 13,000 out of a total of 24,000. Even by last year—under my predecessor, who, I think, had a different view, and I will come to this later—they had risen to only 15,500 out of a total of 29,000.
That is the real reason for the crisis; a deliberate, total priority given to owner occupation, and a deliberate, total neglect of the essential responsibility of the State to look after the weakest and the poorest in the country. That is the record. Council building throttled back till it did little more than make good the loss caused by slum clearance while private developers were demolishing thousands of rented homes but replacing them with offices, with luxury flats, or both.
No wonder the picture that the Milner Holland Committee paints of housing conditions amongst lower-paid workers and migrants is so appalling. But the right hon. Gentleman never mentioned a single word about it—never mentioned that quite literally those unable to afford owner-occupation and not eligible for council houses are being herded together in worse and worse quarters, more and more in multi-occupation.
The 1963 tenant inquiry showed that four out of five of the boys and girls who had not married when the Rent Act was passed were living in multi-occupation. It also shows that nearly all statutory overcrowded households were families with young children. These are the groups who are forgotten, because they cannot get a house.
There is the extreme consequence of Tory policy—those actually homeless. The Committee found that 7,000 people were living in local authority accommodation in 1964, and about 1,000 children were in care because of housing difficulties. It added, dryly:
These are only the homeless who qualify for welfare accommodation: there must be


many more who do not. Single people and couples without children are almost invariably excluded from such accommodation. It is also the policy of a number of welfare authorities to refuse to admit husbands, and families without a mother.
That is the real background—not the Tory propaganda—against which we can measure the decision to introduce the Rent Act and decontrol of housing.
The previous Government knew of the housing shortage. They were warned of it—they were warned of the disastrous effect of decontrol. Sir Milner is as forthright in condemning the responsible politicians as he is in defending the majority of landlords, and I think that he is fair to do so. I think it fair to say that if we are to measure guilt the politicians who brought in the system are more responsible than those who worked it. Sir Milner shows how every prediction made by those who promoted that infamous Measure has been falsified by the facts.
I do not want to make a lot of quotations, or quote the wild prediction of such doctrinaire extremists as the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell), but I should like to take one more example from one notable for his great moderation, statesmanship, caution and loyalty—the former Member for Saffron Walden, now Lord Butler. Speaking in a debate in 1960, when the disastrous consequences of the Rent Act were clear to every eye, the right hon. Gentleman said the effect of the Rent Act
… was to encourage landlords to keep their property available for letting instead of selling as soon as they obtained vacant possession… The object was also to encourage private enterprise to provide new accommodation for renting, to convert their properties in larger number and more convenient units and to encourage the better use of the available stock of housing by discouraging people from occupying more space than they need or can afford."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 8th November, 1960; Vol. 629, c. 963.]
Let us take that statement clause by clause. The first is
… to encourage landlords to keep their property available for letting instead of selling…
In fact, the pool of private rented property was reduced. The next is:
…to encourage private enterprise to provide new accommodation for renting…

No accommodation at all was provided at rents which these tenants can afford.
… to encourage landlords to make the better use of the available stock of hous.…
Under-occupation has increased since 1957 in the private as against the public sector. That means that every single one of the claims made for the Rent Act by Lord Butler in 1960 is shown by this Report to be balderdash.
The excuse is, we were told by the right hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames, "We did not know. We had not the Milner Holland Report. We had to wait for the facts". The Committee has, of course, collected much invaluable information—I shall have more to say about that a little later—but its Report contains no revelation, nothing new. We did not have to wait for publication of the Report to foresee what must happen if decontrol took place when private rented housing was in desperately short supply.
In 1957, speaker after speaker among my right hon. and hon. Friends, when we were in opposition, described what would happen under creeping decontrol. In preparation for this debate I went into some of the debates of seven or eight years ago, and I was struck by the remarkable resemblance between the analysis made by my right hon. Friend the present Foreign Secretary, then the Opposition spokesman on housing, in half a dozen debates, and the analysis of the Committee. I was struck by the amazing way in which he anticipated the Committee's findings. Even his style anticipated the Committee's blend of objective logic and human sympathy.
I think of what was said by the Joint Parliamentary Secretaries, who described conditions in Bermondsey and Paddington as they knew them; of what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Willesden, West (Mr. Pavitt) and, above all, of what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Paddington, North (Mr. Parkin) in his one-man campaign. If anyone can claim responsibility for this debate taking place today, it is my hon. Friend, who produced evidence and views that compelled this kind of investigation. One other name I must mention—the late Michael Cliffe, a former colleague of ours. He was picked


out by Sir Milner Holland as an understanding student of London.
There is not an argument in the Report, there is not even a description of conditions, that is not outlined in sketch—sometimes in detail—in Opposition speeches between 1959 and 1964. What effect did those speeches have on the Government? [HON. MEMBERS: "None."] None at all.

Mr. Christopher Chataway: The right hon. Gentleman has agreed with the Milner Holland Committee that the greatest need over these years was an increase in private-rented housing, but how many of the speakers whom he has quoted were urging an increase in private landlordism and in privately-owned rented housing?

Mr. Crossman: I see the effect of losing office. I said that the shortage was in rented housing at moderate rents. People in need do not ask questions about whether it is publicly-owned or privately-owned property, it they can have it. If they can, they probably prefer the publicly owned. What they want is rented housing at moderate rents—

Mr. A. P. Costain: In considering those debates, will the Minister turn his attention to my speech in which I said that as long as the Socialist Party intended to bring in controls, there would still be no enthusiasm for private landlords to build?

Mr. Crossman: I was not trying to cover all the speeches made in the debates, but only pointing out that the arguments and analyses in this Report were presented by the Labour Opposition in analysing what was wrong, and not by the other side in defending the Rent Act.
I will take just one more instance to remind us of the mood. I see sitting in the back benches the right hon. Member for Hampstead (Mr. Brooke). He was my predecessor in 1960. He had been forced to listen to my right hon. Friend the Member for Fulham (Mr. M. Stewart) pointing out what was happening to tenants who lost their security of tenure under creeping decontrol.
What is the Opposition suggestion…?
He asked testily, when he finally rose to reply:

Is it security of tenure? The best way in which people can make certain of security of tenure is by buying a house of their own."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 8th November, 1960; Vol. 629, c. 860.]
There is a macabre blend of Marie Antoinette with an Edwardian aunt in this suggestion that if those families in Willesden or Islington did not like the single furnished rooms in which they were huddled they should just go out and buy a house. What a relief we felt when the right hon. Gentleman was promoted—until we saw that he had even bigger and better opportunities to display his prim precise humanity in his new office as Home Secretary, [HON. MEMBERS: "Cheap."] It is not cheap, it is true.
I turn from the Opposition, whose records I have been analysing, to the conclusion of this Report, and I start with information. Sir Milner Holland draws attention to the appalling inadequacy of the data available. I will not quote the passage, but he says quite clearly that he requires us to organise an adequate intelligence service which enables us to know more than anybody knew about London before he did his investigation.
Even before the Report came into my hands, I had been beginning to reorganise the information services required. I hope we shall get that done. It will take some time and we shall require from local authorities far higher standards of information than we have at present. But we are making sure that the results of the census are made available far more quickly. When we came into office, the vital housing statistics from the 1961 census had still not been processed, partly because my own Ministry's statistical department consisted when I got there of one statistician who had been there for three months and partly because the processing of the figures was taking place on the War Office computer and had to be stopped every time the War Office needed the computer for calculating Service pay.
That kind of nonsense which survived 13 years of Tory rule we are slowly putting right. This should mean that we can begin to plan our housing programme in relation to real housing needs so that we know not only the total number of family units to be catered for but also whether we are over-building for three bedroom and under-building for one bedroom accommodation in the country as a whole and region by region.
There is something else we know little about. That is the condition of tenants. How perilous it is to base a housing policy upon ignorance I illustrate from one example of my immediate predecessor. Speaking just 12 months ago in another of these statements he said this:
Since the Rent Act—and I admit that our evidence is several years out of date, but it is the latest evidence available—80 per cent. of the dwellings which are vacated have remained rented, admittedly at a higher price. They remain in the rented pool."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 18th March, 1964; Vol. 691, c. 1426.]
I regard the right hon. Gentleman as one of the most hard-working Ministers there has probably ever been. He would never have made a statement without getting the best information he could. Yet on that occasion he totally misled the House, as I have already shown. When he claimed this success with the Rent Act, the rate of loss was catastrophic. Indeed, my calculations suggest that the number of privately rented houses sank in London between 1961 and 1964 by 130,000 houses. How did the right hon. Gentleman come to make this mistake? I have discovered the reason—because the latest figures he quoted were drawn from a study which had been made in 1958, six years before. No other information had been collected since then. So I believe that both sides of the House will agree with me that we cannot afford to let our policies be based on such hopelessly obsolete and misleading information.
I turn now to the Committee's recommendations about security of tenure. Here I was fascinated by the right hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames, because he was so careful to tell us that he had discussed only London. It so happens that the Committee cast its net a little wider. I want to read a passage from the Committee's conclusions. Having come out quite clearly with the statement that lack of security of tenure is a major problem in London, the Committee goes on with the following sentence:
It is perhaps anomalous that while other forms of tenancy—business, agriculture, and indeed almost every tenancy other than residential—have long enjoyed the protection of security of tenure in some form accompanied by a proper system for ascertaining the correct rent, no analogous security is given to private residential tenancies except in the

limited and diminishing field remaining in rent control.
That does not refer only to London. That is a statement about everywhere. How I agree entirely with it! How characteristic it was of the Conservatives that in 1954 they passed the Landlord and Tenant Act to give security to business premises. Three years later they passed the Rent Act to take security away from the home.
In the Protection from Eviction Act we have set about the task of putting this right. What we have done we can measure to some extent by the figures of London's homeless. In the six weeks immediately before the passing of that Act 132 families applied to the L.C.C. for accommodation and said that they were homeless or threatened with homelessness by their landlords' action. In the eleven weeks after the Act the figure had dropped from 132 to 42. Certainly, this is not perfect, but it is a considerable improvement.
I know that a great deal of alarm has been caused in London by the Clerkenwell case and in Birmingham by a similar case. However, I think that some of my hon. Friends have the thing wrong. What these show is not a hole in the Protection from Eviction Act. These show that brutal harassment, which should have been regarded as a crime long before the Protection from Eviction Act, is tolerated in this country and no action is possible against it. We have looked at the Committee's Report. We have studied the New York statute. Our new Rent Bill will include a clause dealing with harassment, torture and persecution which I hope the right hon. Gentleman will find strong enough to suit him. I want to utter this warning. No law however perfect, can prevent inhumanity, unless tenants know their rights, report them to the police or local authority, and speedy effective assistance is proffered to them. A number of changes will have to come about in order to achieve that.
I do not intend to discuss any more the Bill that is to come next week. I want to say something about the other side, which is the way we are going to build the new rented houses which both sides of the House now agree must be built. On the details of the policies, my hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary


Secretary, who has a special responsibility for London, will have a great deal to say. He has already visited every one of the new boroughs. He has talked the problem over with them and has remained in constant touch with the G.L.C. He is already, to his credit, clawing back for public rented housing a good many acres of building land in London which private developers had their eye on. I will leave him to tell his own story. I shall deal only with the two issues of principle raised by the Report.
The first of these is the rocirc;le of the private landlord and what we should do. I quite agree with the right hon. Gentleman that it is a clear recommendation of the Committee and, moreover, a recommendation which flows logically from its whole philosophical attitude to the problem. After recognising the prime rôle of the local authorities in building, the Committee urges that linked with that should be the housing associations and also private landlords, even though this must involve the Government not merely in removing the present tax bias in favour of owner-occupation and against rented property but also in paying outright subsidies to private landlords as well.
There is one point on which I agree with the Committee wholeheartedly. I am glad that it has confirmed our view that, if we are to get the quality of rented accommodation we need in our great cities for these lower-paid workers, each house must be heavily subsidised so as to keep the rent within the capacity of those who need the houses most. The provision of these new houses cannot be undertaken as a commercial enterprise. It must, in the literal sense, be regarded as a social service which the taxpayer and the ratepayer sustain because, without these rented houses and the people who live in them, the life in a great cosmopolis, a great urban conurbation, cannot be sustained. These lower-paid workers simply cannot afford to pay the ordinary commercial rate. This is the reason for this social service.
It is just because I agree with the Committee that the provision of this kind of housing must be a social service that I doubt whether the Committee is right in suggesting that in this task private should be yoked to public enterprise.

When the Committee urges us to consider housing associations for cost-rent housing, my reaction is completely positive. If scarcity is to be overcome—and that must be our aim as soon as
possible—the local authorities cannot afford to reject any ally who could take over any part of this burden.
If housing associations can be used to offer cost-rent housing—which is a practical proposition especially to help the mobility of young executives—I am convinced that they should be supported and the tax law should be modified in order to assist them. But I am equally convinced that there will be no advantage in extending housing subsidies outside the public sector. Subsidies should go to the local authorities, to the housing associations, and not into the begging bowl of private enterprise.
Having said that, I want to add something else. That does not exclude the private landlord. He has an enormous rocirc;le to play in the repair and improvement of the great grey areas of private property which are falling into dilapidation or being demolished and replaced with expensive accommodation. It is here that public enterprise needs the help of the private landlord, and I am hopeful that the flexible rent regulations we have evolved will not only restore security of tenure to the good tenant but will encourage the landlord to prolong the life of his property by repairs and improvements. If it does not, the Bill will not succeed.
I must add this. When I studied the record of my predecessors in office, from Harold Macmillan with "Operation Rescue" in 1954, what "Nye" Bevan called "a mouldy turnip", to the right hon. Member for Leeds, North-East, I must say that I realised that something much more drastic than inducements and tax concessions to private landlords is required if the areas blighted by multi-occupation are to be renewed and the twilight areas saved from decay. That is why I entirely accept the Committee's stress on the need for an attack applied and directed to London as a whole, and I hope that the G.L.C. powers in this respect are sufficient to provide the strategic central direction needed—which again the right hon. Gentleman failed to mention.
The last proposal which the Committee made was for the establishment of "special areas of control" with a special organisation to control sales and lettings, to acquire property, to require improvements and to redevelop. To those who want speedy action, this proposal is obviously tempting, but I want to issue a word of warning. London is going. through a difficult period of local government reorganisation. The last thing that I want to do is to add to the multiplicity of new administrative units. Certainly, special areas must be designated for special treatment. Certainly, we have to make sure that the procedures of redevelopment are streamlined and that the powers of compulsory acquisition are sufficient to make urban renewal more than a mere phrase. But whether we need to set up a new authority in such special areas is much more doubtful. Indeed, there is only one type of new authority which I am at present prepared to consider.
I am consulting with a number of well-established old towns—Ipswich, Northampton, Peterborough, Warrington—in order to evolve a system of twinning under which a new town corporation can be established so as to double their size in the shortest possible time and so help to deal with overspill. This new town type of machinery, which was evolved in the first place by Lord Silkin, was far the most brilliant and successful invention of post-war housing. Wherever it has been applied it has achieved more housing, better housing and better planned community living than would have been possible under normal circumstances.
I am very hopeful that the marriage of this new town technique with old town renewal will prove successful. In working out the details I have sometimes wondered whether it would not be possible for one of our great conurbations, faced with the almost insuperable scale of central redevelopment required, to demand that a new town corporation should be established to rebuild one of its areas, to carve out an area within it and build a new town inside the old town. Of course at present that is only an idea, but if the request comes to me from any great conurbation it certainly will not be automatically turned down.

Sir Keith Joseph: The right hon. Gentleman told my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucestershire, South (Mr. Corfield) that he would say something about the pace of the fall of rented stock before 1957. My hon. Friend was asking about the relative pace before and after. Has the right hon. Gentleman got the figures?

Mr. Crossman: The pace was 4 per cent. per annum from 1957. I will try and get the other figure before the debate is wound up.
To sum up, the Government's attitude to the Milner Holland Report is of course positive, apart from two important exceptions which I have talked about. And no wonder, because what we said during the years of Opposition about London housing shortage and housing shortage in general, about the effects of decontrol, about the dangers of unplanned private demolition and development, about the doctrinaire and exclusive preference shown by the Tories for owner-occupation and their doctrinaire dislike for public rented housing—on every one of these issues the Report has provided the evidence which vindicates our attitude.
Sir Milner Holland urges us to accept the need for subsidised housing in London and give it top priority. That is just what we shall do, and we shall be announcing our plans in the coming weeks. Sir Milner urges us to end creeping decontrol by restoring security of tenure and rent regulation. The Rent Bill which we will submit to the House next week is our response to his challenge. In expressing the hope that the Opposition have been sufficiently chastened by this Report and are now ready to abandon their own policies and help us to pass our Rent Bill, I can give them this assurance. This is only our first assault on the insecurity of tenure, our first step towards urban renewal, our first step in disposing of the housing shortage that we inherited from them. There are a great many more to come.

5.35 p.m.

Mr. Henry Brooke: The Milner Holland Report has been almost universally acclaimed in the House and outside. The difference between the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Housing and Local Government and us on this side is that we accept the whole,


whereas he obviously intends to be selective. He has specifically explained that he does not intend to seek to give assistance to private landlords to play their part in solving this most intractable housing problem, a part which the Milner Holland Report says it is essential for the country to look to private landlords to play.

Mr. Weitzman: rose—

Mr. Brooke: No, I shall not give way as soon as I have got up.
The members of the Milner Holland Committee deserve the warmest thanks from both sides of the House for the accuracy, the penetration and the speed with which they have completed this Report. I should like to congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-East (Sir K. Joseph) on his action in setting up this inquiry. If I blame myself for anything, it is that I did not set it up before I left the Ministry of Housing and Local Government.
I support the implementation of the whole Report, unlike the Government. I agree with its findings and I most strongly back the co-operation between public and private agencies which it urges as an absolute necessity. Whether they share that view will be the ultimate test of this Government's policy. I have never at any time concealed my view. I also, have been looking up some of these past debates. I have never concealed my view that a very grave housing problem still exists in London for the types of household that the Report pinpoints, in spite of the widespread improvements in recent years for most people, as the Report itself testifies. If the Minister thinks that any Government, in 13 years, could make good all the shortcomings of two centuries he has a great deal to learn.
My assessment of the housing position is on record. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman did not look at these other quotations. When I was Minister I said in paragraph 2 of the last White Paper which I presented to Parliament, in 1961, that
Taking the country as a whole, there has been an immense improvement in the housing situation. But it is not yet enough, for there are still serious shortages in some areas, and there remains some terribly bad housing.
I also said, in paragraph 55, and this has special relevance to the London situation, that

One of the most acute housing problems still left is the multi-occupation by families or lodgers of many large houses designed originally for use by single families. There has been no proper conversion, and the houses are without adequate cooking or sanitary facilities for the numbers now living in them. Often as a result the houses are decaying and the living conditions are disgusting.
There is not much that the Milner Holland Committee could teach me about some of the features of London housing in the bad areas. I served on the London County Council Housing Committee and on my own borough council housing committee, after the end of the war, when the most acute and most terrible housing shortage affected almost everybody in London. Since then housing standards and internal equipment have greatly improved, as this Report shows, but that has sharpened the contrast with those groups whose problem is not yet solved. Far from it.
If I may look wider for a moment, the nature of the London housing problem today is but one facet of the national geographical distribution of population and economc wealth. The forces working for high concentration of population in the South-East area of England are very powerful. This is why, when I was Minister, I first initiated the South-East Study, and that is why the Conservative Government started a drive for better balanced regional development throughout the country.
However great the population pressure in the South-East, in a free market, if there were a free market, economic forces would, of course, produce enough houses. But we have not got a free market. I can give three reasons why: partly the handicaps which the law still imposes on private landlords, partly the artificial subsidy systems which the Report itself condemns, and partly the existence of the green belt policy, which we all, I hope, on both sides uphold.
If we had let the green belts go, land would be cheaper and plentiful and London's housing shortage would be well on the way to vanishing. But, equally, London would very quickly join up with Brighton, Reading, Luton and, I should think, Southend. London's housing shortage is part of the price we have to pay for preserving all that lovely scenery within reach of Londoners. If we are to retain the green belts, we must


be sure that we get everything else right so as to obtain the maximum number of houses and flats at rents within people's means. Here I completely agree with the findings of the Report.
We must secure the maximum land for housing. I well remember how my predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr. Sandys), amended the London County Council's draft development plan and insisted on more land for housing and less for commercial use than the council had proposed.
Further, we may need to raise permissible densities on housing land. Again, the London County Council, in all sincerity, I know, though wrongly in my view—always opposed the raising of densities. I heard the hon. Member for Willesden, East (Mr. Freeson), my nextdoor neighbour in North-West London, ask my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd Carpenter) whether he would propose to increase the density of 200 persons per acre in the centre of London. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman knows the situation well enough to realise that, whereas 200 is the maximum density in the centre, large areas of the rest of London are zoned at 130, 70, or, in some cases, lower figures.

Mr. Freeson: The main problem outlined in the Report is related to inner London and my question related to inner London. I took it that the right hon. Gentleman was referring to inner London and dealing with the main problem which he had discussed earlier. My question was directed to any proposal to increase the density beyond 200 in the central London area.

Mr. Brooke: The hon. Gentleman seems to be putting his own interpretation on "inner London". Normally, when one speaks of inner London now, one refers to the former County of London, and within the County of London there are enormous areas zoned at 70 persons per acre.
If we can get the land, and if we can examine again the permissible densities, we must see also whether we can create circumstances more favourable to private building to let. It may not be possible

to secure any contribution here in inner London where land is very scarce and expensive and building costs are high. If, even when the handicap of taxation and the other difficulties mentioned in the Report are removed, private owners still cannot make a material contribution with new houses or flats within London, we must do everything we possibly can to help the improvement of the vast amount of private rented properties in London. This goes without saying, in my view, but I am not at all sure that the Minister himself accepts it.
The Report speaks of areas of special control. I was very interested in that reference, and interested also in what the right hon. Gentleman said about the possibility of a development corporation taking over a particular part of a big city. This is something which has been discussed before, and I am myself in favour of the widest variety of attempts being made to solve the problem. But I did not quite understand what the Report had in mind with reference to an area of special control, because I could not quite see what it wished to be done by some new organisation which could not be done by the local housing authority taking over the whole of the property compulsorily.
In my borough, a Conservative-controlled borough, quite a large area of run-down property has been taken over. It is now being much better managed and will, in due course, be redeveloped by the housing authority. But I know the reluctance of local authorities to own near-slum property, and the right hon. Gentleman will discover this as a difficulty with which he has to cope. Yet I do not consider it right that local authorities should avoid the responsibility. There are circumstances in which a local housing authority must take over property which it certainly would not wish to own but in respect of which its purchase and management and final redevelopment offers the right solution for the area.
Of course, there must be more building by councils and by the housing associations, to which the right hon. Gentleman gave very little attention in his speech, for the appropriate people. When he was giving figures for the years 1955 onwards, I was not sure whether he was including all the houses which were being


built for Londoners outside London in new towns and elsewhere, and neither was I sure whether, in his figures, he was taking sufficient account of the difficulty which all housing authorities in the built-up area have had ever since a few years after the end of the war in finding land on which to build.
For a few years it was possible to use the bombed sites, but, now that these are virtually exhausted, the main problem facing every housing authority in the London area is to find land on which to build.

Mr. R. W. Brown: The right hon. Gentleman has emphasised the inability of authorities to find land. Will he explain one of his own actions when Minister? The Camberwell Borough Council came to him for help to take over vacant land for development and he refused, insisting that the council should not touch that land in Dulwich. The consequence has been that 1,000 homes have been built by private enterprise at prices from about £7,000 to £20,000, many of which are still empty and being advertised by the developers for sale.

Mr. Brooke: I think that the hon. Gentleman is referring to a deputation which came to see me some years ago to discuss whether certain redevelopments should be done by the Dulwich College Estate, or by the Camberwell Borough Council. Having reviewed the whole situation in Dulwich, and having seen that the borough council had a good deal of land to go on with, I came to the conclusion that, in that instance, it was quite reasonable to permit the Estate to build on that area.

Mr. R. W. Brown: The right hon. Gentleman has not taken my point. At no time have there been fewer than 5,000 families on the Camberwell waiting list and at that time there were 6,000. Will he not agree, therefore, that he permitted development in that area for "out of this world" housing with a density down to 50 persons per acre? He has been talking about densities of 200 persons per acre in inner London, yet he himself allowed building there at 50 persons per acre.

Mr. Brooke: I am quite sure that my decision in that case was right. The hon. Gentleman gave me no warning that he

would raise this point and did not give me a chance to look up the facts, but 1 have no doubt that at that time the
Camberwell Borough Council had land to go on with and I believed that the redevelopment would take place more quickly and more satisfactorily if it were done by a charitable organisation, the Dulwich College Estate. There is no question of private landlordism here.
I was saying that the building by local authorities and housing associations must be for the appropriate people. I am sure that that means that the new building which the Minister is rightly wishing to encourage must be based on systems of differential rents. It is not appropriate that households with large incomes should either stay in or move into council flats at present if that will keep needier people out.
The Report says that in London £21 per week is the average household income of council tenants and that 22 per cent. of them have household incomes over £30. There may be reasons for households with large incomes to be in council flats. For example, in the days of far worse housing shortage after the war numbers of people qualified for council flats on genuine housing need although they had good incomes. But if councils nowadays grant subsidised rents to people of these incomes, what they are really doing—I must say this—is to subsidise not the rents but the cars.
Since those post-war days the London housing situation has become far better, except for the classes that are identified in the Report—families with several children, households with small incomes, newcomers, and old people who can afford very little. Then there is the feckless minority whom it is nearly impossible for any of us to help. They make up, I am afraid, a big percentage of the homeless families. [HoN. MEMBERS: "Nonsense."] The Minister claims—

Mrs. Lena Jeger: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that a careful report about homeless families produced by the L.C.C. as a result of an inquiry conducted with great impartiality, concluded that the problem was not the feckless ne'er-do-well, but the decent, ordinarily


paid worker who just happened to have as many children as the Queen of England?

Mr. Brooke: I am certain that there is a link between problem families and homeless families. That was always so while I was Minister, and I am certain that it continues now.
When the Minister claims that a temporary Act has reduced the number of evictions, I cannot help wondering how much that represents more people being enabled to go on living where they are while not paying any rent.

Mr. Crossman: This is a question of fact. The L.C.C. breaks down its hostels into four categories—A, B, C and D. I was dealing only with categories A and B. These are very carefully classified as categories where the loss of home is due to action by the landlord. All cases of not paying rent are excluded, and those who do not pay rent are classed under "their own fault". Therefore, the ones where the motivation is mainly from the tenant are not included among those where the landlord's action was primarily concerned.
I spoke of a reduction from 130 to 40. Therefore, I think that I was using the statistics very carefully, thanks to the ability of the L.C.C. to break these down extremely well. I can substantiate what has just been said by my hon. Friend, because the L.C.C. tells us every time that the amount of fecklessness causing homelessness is relatively small.

Mr. Brooke: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his explanation. I come back to the Rent Act.

Mr. Ivor Richard: rose—

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Dr. Horace King): Order. If the right hon. Gentleman does not give way, the hon. Gentleman must sit down.

Mr. Richard: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Brooke: I will give way in a moment if the hon. Gentleman wishes to speak.
It is possible to argue now, with hindsight, that in London the Rent Bill should have paid more attention to getting rents

up to a more economical basis and less attention to decontrol. I must remind the House that at the time the Labour Party opposed increases in controlled rents to twice the gross value as strongly as they opposed the decontrol provisions. We now see that twice gross value was, in fact, not enough. It is a very low rent; it is not sufficient now to enable one to keep London property in repair.
The Report says that the Rent Act resulted in no general excessive increase in rents, and that council rents rose as fast as private ones. Over most of England and Wales, away from London and the South Coast and the big cities, we could now have complete decontrol. It is remarkable how housing, which was the major issue of the 1951 General Election everywhere, had ceased over a great part of the country to be an election issue at all in 1964—but not in London. In London, the problem remains of how to remove the anxiety about insecurity without discouraging the letting of rented property, without freezing under-use of accommodation and without compelling landlords to subsidise tenants who do not need it.
I was concerned, when I was Minister, to break away from the destructive effects of rent control at the then quite uneconomic rents, which opponents of the Rent Bill defended, and which the Milner Holland Report roundly condemns. Obviously, in 1956 pre-war rents could not cover repairs at three and a half times pre-war prices. The right hon. Gentleman referred to the responsibilities of the politicians. It was the state of the law at that time that was forcing millions of houses to decay inside and out. We were the Government, and we were told by the then Opposition that we should do nothing about it.
In those days, when a landlord got vacant possession, he naturally tried to sell, or to let furnished. The Rent Act certainly slowed down the rate of loss on rented property far more than it would have slowed down, had there been no Rent Act. There is no question whatever that whereas, up to 1957, when a landlord of such rented property got vacant possession, he sold as quickly as he could, in a far greater number of cases since 1957 he has favourably considered reletting.
That the Rent Act did not achieve more in slowing down the rate of loss of rented accommodation was due principally to the threat of municipalisation. By the time the Labour Party had discovered that municipalisation was an ill-judged policy, and had dropped it, the harm had been done. It had done massive harm in stopping what the Milner Holland Report says is needed more than almost anything else—the investment of money in private housing to bring it up to date.
I will support any punitive measures which are effective against that small, hateful, bad minority of landlords, but if we are to get London housing right the Labour Party's war against private landlords as a class must cease. I was looking up the proceedings in the Standing Committee on the Rent Bill, and I see that I said one day:
a few evilly-disposed people can do great damage. What we must avoid is making the unoffending many suffer for the sake of the miscreant few."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee A, 19th February, 1957; c. 880.]
I was very interested in the passage in the Milner Holland Report dealing with the New York law. It may be that something on those lines is the right solution. However, as the right hon. Gentleman said, it is one thing to pass a law but it is another to see whether it is enforceable and effective, and one cannot be content about legislation until one sees that the desired result will be achieved. Existing laws affecting these matters may, as the Report says, be hard to enforce through sheer shortage of public health inspectors. I do not think that the right hon. Gentleman mentioned this point, but the recruitment and training of more public health inspectors is all-important if we are to get London housing right.
When my predecessor introduced the Rent Bill into the House, in 1956, I do not think that anyone foresaw that falling population would be accompanied by an actual rise in the number of households. But the 1961 census made that position very clear. This is the new factor which has worsened the problem for a number of London housing authorities, my own among them, as the table on page 62 of the Report shows.
It is also quite possible that in 1957 I did not sufficiently allow for the deterrent effect, at the key time, of the

policy of municipalisation, in discouraging the private landlord from putting money into his property. The selling went on because, until the Labour Party, in 1961, saw the error of its ways, a private landlord had no permanent expectation of retaining control of his property.
Then there was the heavy Commonwealth immigration from 1960 onwards. That, also, whatever the Report says, has made the task of a number of London housing authorities far harder. I do not think that the Report takes sufficiently into account the intense localisation of these pressures on what were already problem areas. It was a tour I made of bad housing conditions in London in 1960 which made me more certain than ever that multi-occupation was the worst evil in London housing—much worse than existence in the little old box-like houses which were very old and needed to be pulled down, but in which people had, nevertheless, been accustomed to live on their own all their lives.
Multi-occupation often takes the foulest forms. The Report makes the point that London contains more than half of all the multi-occupation in the country. With permission, I would like to quote something I said in the House almost exactly four years ago on this:
I have seen old, out-of-date houses so modernised that any woman could take pride in running them, and I have seen some conditions so foul that most people would not believe they still survived in this country of ours.
I shall long remember going into one of these big Victorian houses, up dirty steps, through a door with most of the paint off, up a staircase that never was cleaned, to three floors of squalor, except that in one of them the mother was obviously struggling against her surroundings to give her husband and children a decent home. There were no proper kitchens and no lavatory above the ground floor. I then went down to the basement. They tried to discourage me from seeing the basement, because a couple of women who were thought to be prostitutes occupied the basement and it smelt one degree worse than the rest of the house."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 27th March, 1965; Vol. 637, c. 979.]

Mr. Albert Evans: rose—

Mr. Brooke: I do not want to give way again. I just want to finish my speech.
It was that sort of experience which led up to the quite new powers in Part II


of the 1961 Bill which I introduced, and they were further strengthened by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-East in the 1964 Act. I believe that these powers have already been invaluable in improving the situation in a number of multi-occupied houses, but we are still up against the shortage of public health inspectors.
Broadly, I endorse all the aims to which the Milner Holland Report points, as an integrated whole. In 1957, the protection which was given by the 1954 Act to business tenants could not have been extended to domestic tenants, because then there was no free market at all in rents and, therefore, no norm by which the county court could fix rents fairly; but perhaps something on these lines would be workable now as it certainly was not then.
I want to end on a deeper thought. If we try to solve London's problems by making it a place where almost everybody ends up by paying less than an economic rent for his accommodation, either through rent control or through subsidies, this really means that wages throughout the London area are being subsidised with public money. That cannot make sense from the standpoint of the proper distribution of population over the country as a whole.
I believe, therefore, that there are much bigger issues thrown up by the Report than those which have hit the headlines. I believe that deep thinking as well as deep human emotion and determination are needed if, with the help of this great new study, we are to find the right ways through. I pray that we may all press on tirelessly and in unity to find them.

6.6 p.m.

Mr. F. J. Bellenger: I only intervene because I think that I can offer the House a long experience of this problem. For more than 40 years I have been engaged in London in converting and modernising large houses in Kensington. I have also brought up a family of six children and have had to house them. I am, therefore, all in favour of owner-occupation. I have had it most of my life and it has "paid off", as the saying goes.
I was never subject to the whims or fancies of any private landlord. I

could do more or less what I liked and, in the course of time, with inflation continuing, the price of any house I have owned also rose so that, in selling it in order to buy another I have nearly always received more than I have paid. It is true that I have improved my houses, as I hope every owner-occupier does, and the cost of that must be added to the purchase price.
I am, therefore, looking and speaking about this problem from an objective and factual point of view. I listened to my right hon. Friend, with all his eloquence and debating skill but, if he stays in office long enough, his test will be that of action and not criticism of the Opposition, although right hon. Gentlemen opposite badly deserve it. It is not the slightest use former Ministers getting up and trying, to make alibis for what they have or have not done. My right hon. Friend is quite entitled to criticise them, and to do so strongly, because at least they have had power—supreme power with good majorities—for the last 13 years. Although I do not put down the whole of this problem to them, nevertheless, had they been as energetic as my right hon. Friend gives the impression that he will be, I believe that they could have done more to alleviate the subject.
But neither they nor this Government can solve the housing problem in London within the next 20 years, taking conditions as they are, with population flooding in from all over the country and the world. The problem cannot be solved unless land can be found to build on. I shall not speak for long, and I hope that I shall be allowed to make my case. Perhaps it will not be popular, but I hope that at least it will be factual as a result of my experience.
I was interested to hear my right hon. Friend, with his imagination—one might almost call it "vivid"—speak about experimenting with the building of a new town, as it were, in the midst of London. My right hon. Friend pointed to a very good example which was started by the Labour Government between 1945 and 1950, the example of the new towns. There is this difference—and my right hon. Friend will find it quickly enough if he has not done so already—that whereas the new towns were mostly built on virgin soil, as it were, in London there are large developed areas with all the


tremendous costs of acquiring developed land, unless my right hon. Friend alters the whole basis of compensation on which local authorities can take over property.
This is a remarkable idea, but, I regret to say, it will not be and cannot be accomplished in any short time. What of the numbers of people already living in these areas and who will have to be turned out, to be decanted to somewhere else? That, alone, is one physical problem. Nevertheless, in our present situation all ideas should be pooled, wherever they come from, even from the Opposition, if they have any on this subject; and at the last moment they seemed to have only one idea, which is to endorse many of the things which the Report says but of which they must have known when they were in office.

Mr. Graham Page: If the right hon. Gentleman reads a speech which I made five years ago from the Government side of the House, he will see that the idea of new town corporations within old towns was put in almost exactly the same words which we heard from the Government Dispatch Box today.

Mr. Bellenger: I have no objection to the hon. Gentleman claiming some credit for the idea which my right hon. Friend put forward. However, the Opposition did nothing about it when in office. The whole test about plans to deal with the homeless is action, not words. That is the only point of argument which I should like to offer to my right hon. Friend—that the test will be whether he can deliver the goods.
The Report is the outcome of the prompting mainly of my hon. Friend the Member for Paddington, North (Mr. Parkin).

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government (Mr. Robert Mellish): And other London Members.

Mr. Bellenger: My hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey (Mr. Mellish) reminds me that it was also other London Members. That may be quite true, but it was my hon. Friend the Member for Paddington, North who got the headlines, at least on the Rachman examples which he gave to the House.
I will give credit to my hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and to other Members for London constituencies who prompted the setting up of this Committee. However, it was mainly Rachmanism which started the operation of this Committee whose deliberations we are today debating.

Sir K. Joseph: As a point of fact, the Committee was announced in February, 1963, in a White Paper which I laid before Parliament several months before the name of Rachman became known and infamous.

Mr. Bellenger: It is very fortunate for the Opposition to be able to quote these apparent coincidences, but we are debating a problem which the Government of the time did not tackle as thoroughly as, I hope, my right hon. Friend will tackle it, and that is sufficient condemnation of right hon. Gentlemen opposite.
The Report is voluminous. I have read many housing reports, right back to the days of Booth, who investigated the poorer London districts at the beginning of the century, but this Report is of a kind which we have not seen for a long time. The right hon. Member for Hampstead (Mr. Brooke) said that he accepted it in its entirety, but I do not think that one can do that. One has to take its various parts and draw conclusions.
For instance, I agree with my right hon. Friend that if subsidies are to be paid, they should go to local authorities rather than to private landlords. The area of private landlordism among lower rented properties has been depreciating, and I hope to show that it will continue to depreciate. Private landlords operate for a profit, as do many other estimable people. I do not believe that they want subsidies. They want to get rid of their lower rented properties if they can and invest their money in something which will give them a better return. This is a free country and if landlords want to do that, why should they not? Certainly, I agree that they should not be given a subsidy.

Mr. Costain: As the right hon. Gentleman began his speech by defending home ownership, would he also say that the


owner-occupier should not be subsidised, even though that helps to get houses?

Mr. Bellenger: In certain circumstances he should, although how the subsidy is given is a different matter. It was the hon. Gentleman's own Government who gave the owner-occupier a subsidy by withdrawing Schedule A Income Tax, which used to be imposed on owner-occupied property. I am not against the owner-occupier getting some sort of subsidy, but not in the form in which it is given to local authorities who build houses.
The reason, as my right hon. Friend said and as the Milner Holland Report shows, is that in the main local government owned and managed properties are far better managed than the lower rented controlled properties which are owned by private landlords. The reason is obvious and it all comes back to the factor of money. Whereas the rents of local authority houses are not controlled, those of the lower rented houses of private landlords are.
Next week, my right hon. Friend is to introduce a Bill which will reimpose controls on security of tenure. I do not object to that and I do not think that landlords will object. The whole purpose of the landlords is to get good tenants at remunerative rents. The last thing a good landlord wants to do is to turn out a good tenant, for he knows what a bad tenant can do, and I can assure the House that I have seen quite a number of bad tenants who have neglected the property and who, in many cases, as the right hon. Member for Hampstead said, have lived in slum conditions, often of their own making.
When I was a young man, after the First World War, I collected rents in North Kensington, but not for long, I am glad to say. Incidentally, I followed in the footsteps of Bernard Shaw. It may not be generally known that in his young days Bernard Shaw was in estate agency and had to collect rents. I have seen some of the slums of North Kensington. They were horrible places and some of the tenants living in them are not the sort of tenants a good landlord would want to have in his property.
My right hon. Friend says that he has effected a remarkable transformation in

the eviction figures, and, according to the figures he has given, he has. Incidentally, Rachman was a foreign landlord and I hardly like to think that English landlords could descend to the depths he did. It may be, but I would not like to say. Rachman is a name like Quisling has become and—

Mr. Molloy: Would my right hon. Friend not agree, nevertheless, that it was an English Act of Parliament which gave Rachman the licence?

Mr. Bellenger: I am not sure that it was. No Act of Parliament which this House has ever passed gave Rachman or anybody else the right to treat tenants, or mistreat them, as he did. I regret very much that local authorities, faced with that problem—and they know about it, even though there may not be sufficient health inspectors—did not take action to prevent it which, although I do not want to say too much about the matter, is a criticism of them.
All that I am saying is that it is interesting to note that it was a foreigner who was responsible for that. As I say, I have seen many bad conditions and I have seen some bad landlords, but, although perhaps my hon. Friends with more experience than I have can point to them, I do not like to think that Englishmen can descend to the depths which that man did. We will leave it at that.
We know the problem. We knew it in part before the publication of the Report, but we certainly know it now. How are we to deal with it? Although my right hon. Friend has disclosed, in one way or another, some of the features of the rent control which he is to introduce, may I say to him that, although he is absolutely right on the security of tenure aspect, if he thinks that he will get more houses by controlling rents at a figure which will not enable the landlord to keep those properties in a proper state of repair, the inevitable result will be more slums needing to be demolished and more housing problems for the next 10 or 20 years.
We shall see tomorrow what is proposed in the White Paper, but, as I understand it, my right hon. Friend takes this problem, as the Milner Holland Committee did, in two parts. One part concerns security of tenure, with which I agree with my right hon. Friend about, and the second concerns the control of


rents. We cannot force private landlords to enter the house property business if it is not worth their while. If we say to owners of property which is still controlled that the rent which they are able to charge will not be sufficient to pay for the adequate repairs on which local authorities must insist if we are to house tenants properly, landlords will do what they have been doing in spite of sanitary notice after sanitary notice: they will let their property depreciate, and, in particular, owners of one or two houses who do not have additional means will simply say "You can take them". Some have done this, and local authorities have refused to take them.
If we look at the Report devoid of bias or prejudice, we can see a lot of information about how local authorities operate. The remarkable thing is that many local authorities are not providing houses for the lower income tenants, and they do not mean to do so. Indeed, nine local authorities said to the Milner Holland Committee, "The family which stands a good chance of getting a council house is the one which will pay the price." They are doing just the same as private landlords: if one can pay the price one can get the hereditament. Incidentally, I think that flats and not houses are the only solution for this problem. We cannot provide the small houses with gardens such as those which were built in the Victorian age; we do not have the land. That is the most uneconomic way of providing homes for people in London.
All that I would say about the controlled tenancies—it looks as though all the decontrolled tenancies under the 1957 Act will be recontrolled—is that my right hon. Friend, in doing that, which I agree with, will have to provide a fair rental basis one way or the other. It may be that rent tribunals will have to be set up to adjudicate on what is a fair basis of rent. Whatever way is adopted, if those properties are to be kept in adequate repair, a reasonable rent must be charged.
Most hon. Members know how difficult it is in London to get skilled workmen to do a small job in their home. Often the plumbers, glaziers, painters, bricklayers and plasterers say, "We are not interested. We are interested in the jobs which pay us much better." That is why a contract of under a few thousand

pounds is not considered. They want to do more remunerative work. I do not blame them. As long as we have private enterprise, that will always follow. Nevertheless, even if we can get somebody to carry out repairs in decontrolled or uncontrolled property the cost is enormous.
I told the House that I had had over 40 years' experience in this matter. I know that in the old days the cost of simply repairing a sashcord or putting a washer on a tap was practically nothing. But today we know what jobbing builders charge for doing those small jobs. It may be said that tenants can do this work—many of them do do it—but it is the landlord's responsibility in many controlled tenancies. However, when it comes to decorating and structural repairs, controlled rents simply do not provide the basis for this work to be done either by a private landlord or by a local authority, even if houses were municipalised, which the Labour Party had as part of its policy some years ago.
I think that most tenants of council houses pay the local rates apart from their rent. Many tenants of controlled properties have the rates included in their rent. But there is provision in previous Rent Acts to deal with increases in rates. Look at the increases which we have had to stomach as a result of the latest revalution and assessment of property in London. There has been a 20 per cent. increase in rates in many local authorities in central London. That must be paid by the occupier.
Incidentally, one fact which emerges clearly from the Report is that private rents in a certain category are not greater than local authority rents. It is shown on page 30 that, in the case of the gross rent paid by tenants in receipt of National Assistance in 1963, the rent of tenants of private landlords in the County of London averaged £1 14s. 10d. a week whereas that of local authority tenants was £1 19s. 3d. This proves the point that I am making, that the rents of local authority property which is not controlled under the Rent Act are dearer than those of many small privately-owned tenancies. The reason is obvious—because the small privately-owned tenancies are rigidly controlled by an Act which has been long out of date, namely, the 1939 Act, when rents were frozen and security of tenure was given, too.
The two parts of the problem must be tackled together. We cannot isolate the private owner part from the local authority part. My right hon. Friend the Minister has said somewhere that the target is 400,000 houses, and I hope that he will get it. When I was a member of the first Labour Government, although the conditions were quite different just after the war, our target was 200,000. When the Tories brought their target up to 300,000 because of the clamour that was made at one of their conferences, they themselves did not believe that they could achieve that 300,000 and it took them a long time to do it. Unless we cut down other building, particularly office-building, we will not get the 400,000 houses a year, to say nothing of the 500,000 which, I think, is our long-term objective.
I am one of those who believe in the old saying, "Shoot at the moon if you want to hit a haystack." Ministers, however, have to be practical people when they come to this House. We can debate as we like, we can throw all sorts of accusations across the Floor of the House, but today many people, thousands of them, are without a home. They may not be homeless, but they are without an adequate home.
As I said at the start of my speech, having brought up a family of six children over the years I know the meaning of a comfortable home. It generally means a happy home. Therefore, because of the lack of homes among a large number of the population, especially in London, there must be many unhappy homes.
I merely offer my advice or comment, such as it is, in relation to that factor. If we want a contented population, especially amongst the families—and I put them first—we must provide them with a good home. Private enterprise will do it for the upper income brackets —we need not worry about them. I have never had any trouble in getting my housing accommodation, and neither has my right hon. Friend the Minister; he has never had any trouble either. He is fully conscious of the large number of people who are not in the same position as he or I, or even of Members of Parliament generally.
Therefore, the test will be whether my right hon. Friend can solve this problem, never mind what the Opposition have done in years gone by. He will not do it on the basis of a debate on the Milner Holland Report, or even of the Bill concerning rents which he will shortly introduce. It needs one, if not more, comprehensive housing Bills. Only thus can we deal with the situation that is outlined in the Report. That is what I should like my own Government to do. Whether they can do it in the parliamentary time at their disposal and with their majority, I do not know. Make no mistake about it, however. That is the only way to solve this housing problem.

6.33 p.m.

Christopher Chataway: The right hon. Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Bellenger) has at least approached the Report in a more dispassionate and more constructive spirit than did his right hon. Friend the Minister. In arguing that rents must be set at a reasonable level or else we create more slums, the right hon. Gentleman takes the attitude that is evident in many parts of the Milner Holland Report.
Hegelians might, I suppose, argue that the Report provides something of a synthesis between the past views of the parties. We may argue, if we wish, whether the tenor of the Report is nearer the original thesis of the Conservative Party or nearer the original antithesis provided by the Labour Party. The truth of the matter, as most hon. Members will admit to themselves, if not in this debate, is that the tenor of the Report is in many respects very different from the policies that have been advocated from many quarters in this House.
Two major recommendations stand out from the pages of the Report. The first is a need to strengthen the safeguards given to a considerable proportion of tenants in London. That means the need to forge yet stronger weapons to deal with the small minority of thug landlords. I was glad to hear the Minister say that he thinks that something can be done along the lines of the New York legislation. It also means more and wider security of tenure.
The Report proves, to my satisfaction at least, that the free market cannot, in


the short run, meet the problems of London. I believe that like other Western countries, we should be moving towards a free market, but in London's conditions it seems clear that security of tenure has to be afforded to a wider
section of the market than is now the case.

Mr. Freeson: Apart from Sweden, can the hon. Member state which European country is moving towards a free market in rented housing?

Mr. Chataway: Yes, West Germany. The Report particularly commends the system by which West Germany is moving to a free market, pointing to the fact that West Germany has developed sophisticated techniques for determining the point at which rent controls may be removed. That is one of the major conclusions that stand out from the Report.
The other major conclusion is the need to render rented housing more attractive to investors. I believe that the pages of the Report—and there are many of them—which are devoted to this subject will have come as a surprise to many hon. Members. I readily confess that until I read the Report, I had not appreciated just what are the disincentives that the private investor is faced with in moving into housing.
As the Report states at page 187, however, hardship caused by insecurity of tenure
is accentuated by the inadequate and shrinking stock of London housing available for private renting".
No measures for increasing security of tenure will be much good without measures to increase the stock of private rented housing. The crying need is to make private landlordism more attractive. If hon. Members opposite want today to point to a whole lot of conclusions in the Report that are at variance with arguments advanced by the Conservative Party, we equally can point to the fact that virtually nobody among hon. Members who now occupy the benches opposite was arguing that case.
I am glad to see that the Minister has now returned. As I was saying during his absence, I hope that for the rest of the day we will not be primarily concerned to determine whether the Report is nearer to the arguments that have been advanced by the Conservative Party or nearer to

those advanced in the past by the Labour Party. The Minister may laugh and argue, as he did during his speech today, that housing is bound to be a matter of party politics and that he always suspects his opponent of having a weak case, and argue that it should not be the subject of
fierce party knockabout. The fact is, and it is well argued in the Report, that in most European countries there has been a greater measure of political security for the private investor. The Report argues that it is on that account that most European countries have seen a larger investment in private housing than we have in this country.

Mr. Molloy: The hon. Member says that we cannot argue the case on what the Conservative Party or the Labour Party have said in the past—and that may be so—but that we must argue it on what the Report says. We then discover that the Report generally is a condemnation of certain aspects of private landlordism. It has no bad word whatever to say about local authority landlordism. It is we on this side who are in favour of local authority landlordism, and it is the hon. Member who supports private landlordism.

Mr. Chataway: I am not encouraged to give way to the hon. Gentleman too many times in the future after that intervention. He will, no doubt, have an opportunity to give his own account of what the Report says. The only point I have made so far—and I do not see that he had any reason to challenge it—is that the conclusions of the Report and what amount to recommendations are in many respects at variance with what hon. Members in all parts of the House have been saying in the past, and it seems to me more profitable to concentrate on discussing whether those recommendations are right.
Perhaps the single most illuminating chapter in this document is Chapter 12, the chapter which gives the international comparisons. I have had a feeling on many occasions in the past that we are still too insular in discussing our social problems. I believe this to be true in education, and I have wondered in the past whether there would not be advantage in having somewhere in Whitehall a statistical and information bureau from


which one could get details of the practices of our neighbours in Western Europe. It is not, of course, that they are more likely to be right on every issue than we are, but whether it be comprehensive versus grammar school, whether it be land prices, or the shortage of teachers, or private rented housing, the fact of the matter is that in many of those Western European countries exactly the same problems have been faced over a good long period, and a number of different solutions have been tried out.
However that may be, the data collected here about other cities are, I think, extremely valuable. In Chapter 12, and in Table 12.2, we see that Paris, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Geneva, Amsterdam and Hamburg all have a very much higher proportion of private rented accommodation than we have. To London's 34 per cent. we find in those other cities proportions varying from 50 per cent. to 73 per cent. of private rented houses.
Perhaps the most serious weakness in London's present housing situation is that the stock of private rented housing is being reduced by 4 per cent. a year and that private investment is not being attracted into housing. The Report urges various changes. The Minister the other day, in his by-election speech, said that he would not be inclined to follow the recommendations of the Report about taxation for landlords because, he said, "The Conservatives have been trying to get private investment into housing for a good number of years and they have failed and I do not see there is much point in my trying now"—words to that effect. He will know that over these past years it would have been extremely difficult in practice for my right hon. Friends to have persuaded investors into housing in any large numbers while the Labour Party's policy remained as it did. He may contest that, but, of course, he knows it is true. When most private landlords were threatened with municipalisation, naturally they were not going to invest large sums of money in housing. Hon. Gentlemen opposite may not like that, but if an hon. Gentleman opposite were to invest for a trade union, or if he were a private investor on his own account, would he put a

massive amount of money into housing when under a two-party system the second party said, first, that it would municipalise property and, secondly, that it would introduce an economic rent? Of course not.

Mr. Crossman: May I ask the hon. Gentleman one question? This point has been made by various hon. Members opposite. I have read the Report very carefully and it seeks to analyse all the reasons for the failure to have private rented housing. Would the hon. Gentleman show me the passage in the Report where it indicates the influence which Labour's propaganda had on it? Because I cannot find it here.

Mr. Chataway: The right hon. Gentleman will not expect me to produce the best reference to that offhand, but I will refer him to page 218, since this is the chapter I am talking about at the moment, where, talking about rents, the Committee said that
we gained the impression that landlords themselves seldom attract the political interest focussed upon them in London. In countries where the rights and wrongs of the private landlord have not been the subject of such prolonged and embittered political conflict it has been possible to establish more productive and responsible relationships between government and the various interests and groups concerned.
That is one reference. No doubt, given time, I could find better ones. It was therefore disappointing to many who had supposed that the Minister was prepared to accept the spirit of the Report that almost his first comment on it should have been that in his by-election speech to which I have referred.
It will be very easy to reimpose rent restrictions, as the right hon. Gentleman has emphasised. It is desperately important that we do not get the wrong kind of rent controls which will leave the situation worse than it was before. Too rigid rent controls could, of course, remove yet more property from the rented market.
I would suggest that there are really three essentials in any extension of rent control. The first is that rent control should be imposed only in those areas where it is really necessary. Both Germany and Sweden, I suppose the two outstandingly successful countries in postwar housing, are, as I mentioned earlier,


decontrolling where possible. Secondly, rents should be set near to the market level and provide a good return on capital. Thirdly, there should be machinery for regular and impartial reviews of rent levels.
It is significant to see in Table 12.4, on page 216, that of nine cities London has been the longest without reviewing its control of rents. It will always, I suspect, be difficult for any Government to review rents fairly. Governments are subject to all sorts of pressures which make it uncertain that they will regularly review rents. I would hope, therefore, that for the controlled part of the market we would follow the example of quite a number of other cities cited in the Report and set up an independent review tribunal.
Clearly, the Minister has a choice to make about this Report and his housing policy. Either he can slap on wholesale, uneconomic rent controls which may please sections of his party, and perhaps in the short-term they will win him a few votes, but if he does that he will go down not only as the person who ignored this Report but as a Minister who positively accentuated London's housing difficulties. Or, he can, as the Report persuasively urges, encourage all four types of housing—council, housing association, private rented and home ownership.
We have an effective machinery in this country for council building, probably one of the most effective in Western Europe, though the system of subsidies and means of Exchequer grants, as the Report suggests, needs some review. Secondly, we have a good record of building for home ownership, and all I would say on that to the Minister, who today has been arguing that a much larger proportion of our building ought to be council building and a much smaller proportion for home-ownership, is that this is an odd argument to advance in conjunction with a policy for lower mortgages, which must surely increase the demand for the small stock of private housing.
Thirdly, the housing associations. My right hon. Friend set the housing associations along an expansionary path, although tax concessions are needed, as the Report demonstrates, if the associations are to meet the most pressing needs.

I was glad to hear the Minister give what I thought a favourable reaction to that suggestion. Our greatest deficiencies are clearly in the field of privately rented housing. Here, as the Report repeatedly urges, measures are urgently needed to provide capital and render more attractive the ownership of rented property. The Minister might, as is done in France, give generous capital allowances to residential developers. He might, as happens in Germany, use a combination of tax incentives and subsidies to mobilise private enterprise in this sphere. He might, as is done in Sweden, give private developers of rented accommodation a third mortgage at a low rate of interest.
I do not believe that necessarily there should be both tax incentives and subsidies. The Minister seemed to be arguing that because the Report talked about tax incentives and subsidies, and because he was not prepared to envisage subsidies, therefore we should leave things as they are, but surely—

Mr. Crossman: indicated dissent.

Mr. Chataway: I am sorry if I misunderstood the right hon. Gentleman.

Mr. Crossman: I limited myself to the view that I thought it unwise to consider a Government subsidy for private landlords building new housing. I left the question of the tax law free, only saying that I was in favour of a tax being fair to housing associations, and indeed to everybody.

Mr. Chataway: I am glad to know that the Minister is still prepared to consider the recommendations about tax changes, because clearly if those changes are made, even without any other change, the private developer could cater to a lower level of income than at present.
The Report certainly lays stress on the need for tax changes. In this country we have what is probably one of the most efficient property industries to be found anywhere. Its techniques are being employed all over the Western world and yet, as is shown by Table 12.3 on page 215 in the Report, of nine cities, only London and one other do not give Government loans or subsidies to privately rented houses, so it is not a very revolutionary suggestion which is made in the Report. I should have thought it one


which did not need to be dismissed out of hand by any Government.
Of the nine cities referred to in the table only London and two others do not give tax exemptions for landlords' depreciation funds. On this issue more than on any other the sincerity of the Government in dealing with the housing problem will be judged. I hope that the Government will accept the recommendations in the Report as a whole. I hope that the Minister will be prepared to stimulate housing on all four fronts, as the Report suggests. If he picks and chooses, if the Government show no interest in the development of private houses for renting, it will be clear that the right hon. Gentleman is more interested in party dogma than in London's housing problem.

6.54 p.m.

Mr. G. R. Strauss: The hon. Member for Lewisham, North (Mr. Chataway), who spoke in his usual disarming manner, suggested that this subject should be considered objectively and free from party prejudice. The hon. Gentleman then went on to make some party points. He must realise that this is a matter which cannot be divorced from party controversy as party affairs are all affairs that concern the social conditions of our people. We can no more divorce housing from party controversy than we can divorce employment, health or any other matter closely affecting the lives and conditions of our people. We should be failing in our duty if we did not express our party principles on these occasions. That does not mean that we do not try to examine the Report as objectively as possible.
The other thing which the hon. Member for Lewisham, North said which interested me very much was that he supported the move for wider security for tenants, as is suggested in the Report. We were all delighted to hear it, but we must remind the hon. Gentleman that he supported the 1957 Act which did more to remove security of tenure from tenants than any other Act passed by any Government during this century. By its wide measures of direct and creeping decontrol, security for tenants was removed in a big way. Indeed, that Act is condemned, indirectly but implicitly, in

the Report which we are discussing today, which speaks of the "haphazard and unpredictable process" of decontrol which took place in this country and suggests that it is among the major causes of the abuses which take place and the bad relations which exist between landlord and tenant.
To me, as to all hon. Members who have spoken in this debate, this Report is a remarkable document. It is remarkable in its analysis, in its conclusions and in the evidence it produces in support of those conclusions. It is a near-miracle that the Report should have been produced in such a short time. In its horrifying revelations it may well be compared with some of the Royal Commission Reports of the last century which exposed the frightful conditions in which various sections of the working-class lived and worked. Then, unfortunately, it usually took decades, with opposition by private vested interests and frustration by delays in legislation, before effective remedies were applied. Today we are fortunate in facing the prospect that these grave social injustices, or at any rate, most of them, will be remedied quickly under the guidance of my right hon. Friend. No doubt in the Bill which he will bring before the House—and the House will pass rapidly—we will see a number of measures to get rid of, at least, some of the worst abuses exposed in this Report.
I want to say a few words arising from my own experience of these matters, having attended a weekly "surgery" in my constituency for over 40 years. In pre-war days the greatest distress caused to my constituents, and to the working people of London generally, was the fear of unemployment. Today it is the fear of losing their home. That is a more serious and distressing threat in that it leads to a break-up of families which may last a very long time. The exposures in the Report can come as no surprise to those of us—most London hon. Members do the same as I do—who regularly attend "surgeries" for our constituents. We knew this sort of thing was happening in our own areas. One of the things achieved by the Report is the revelation that conditions which we might have thought unique in our own constitiuencies are common throughout London.
When we quoted in the House or in the Press individual cases of gross exploitation and persecution of tenants by landlords, we made little public impact, as the cases were often dismissed as exceptional and too sensational. Those of us who spoke about them were regarded as being animated by political bias. So, too often, our points fell on stony ground. That can no longer happen, now that this exposure has been made of the conditions which apply all over London, by an impartial and objective body supported by a mass of incontrovertible evidence. It has shown that it is not simply a matter of a few luckless families, falling by accident on unhappy times, but a condition affecting thousands of people throughout London and threatening tens of thousands more all the time.
The Report is right when it says that the greatest distress caused to the people of London by the present housing situation is not the actual bad housing conditions in which many people have to live—though these are horrible enough—but the insecurity in the minds of so many who have homes. Threats and potential threats of being turned out of their homes cause indescribable distress and often result in the mental unbalance of the parents of families. They come to us, Members of Parliament who want to try to help them and give them advice, and ask us what they can do, how they can prevent themselves and their children—and as the Report shows, it is young married couples with children who suffer most—being put on the streets when their landlord threatens them with eviction. In nine cases out of ten we have to tell these people—this is the most painful duty which we have to perform—that we can give them no help. There is nothing that we or they can do, because, under the law as it stands, they are powerless to do anything if they live in uncontrolled premises. The landlord has power to evict them, and they have to go through all the heartbreak and distress of becoming homeless, with nowhere to go.
It is no use saying to them that this is a result of the laws passed by another party, by the Conservative Government, and that they will have to wait until the law is changed. We have to dismiss them and say that there is nothing to be done, that they have to suffer. That is a horrible thing to have to say. Of course,

the situation is better as a result of the Act which my right hon. Friend has brought in to prevent eviction. If the Labour Government had done nothing else but produce this Act, it would have justified its election to power. It has, by that Act, earned the gratitude of thousands of people throughout London. I hope that the coming of legislation which my right hon. Friend will introduce will be equally beneficial.
It seems to me that the Report in its disclosures of the distress and difficulties which Londoners suffer through the present shortage and lack of security does not give sufficient emphasis to one aspect of the problem, and that is the illegal and improper pressure put on large numbers of tenants to disposess them of their houses, when their landlords have no legal right whatsoever to do so. People are so frightened by the threats, blackmail, solicitors' letters written with all the authority which their authors can devise and quoting Acts of Parliament that they often leave homes without taking advice, and their families are split up. That happens constantly with numberless tenancies in controlled premises.
However, there are other devices which are also common and the Report makes no mention of these. Here is one example which came to my attention a short time ago. An elderly couple had lived in controlled premises for years when a new landlord took over and said to them, "I can give you better premises than these. I want your premises for development. I will not raise your rent at all and I will pay your removal expenses." They thanked the landlord warmly and moved. They went into nicer rooms, their rent was not increased and their removal expenses were paid. After three weeks, the landlord gave them notice, and, as they were in uncontrolled premises and had no protection, out they went. This sort of thing happens on a large scale. Another type of abuse which is not uncommon happened to a young couple with children who went into premises which were pretty rotten. The young man intended to make this a home for his wife and children of which he could be proud. He understood that they could stay there as long as they liked. He had spent all his savings, £300, making these rooms habitable, when the


landlord said, "Out you go," and out they had to go, with no legal redress.
There is one more example which I should like to quote of the sort of practice which a landlord may get up to. It happened in my own constituency which is not far from here, and is in fact just over the other side of the river—which does not make people more law-abiding, but it does somehow make it more shocking, when it happens so close to the Palace of Westminster. A controlled tenant was threatened with eviction and I told him that he need not worry, that he was perfectly all right. Shortly afterwards, the landlord, who had unsuccessfully bullied him to go, asked him if he would buy the house. He said he would let him have it cheap, for £2,500. The tenant could not pay it anyway, but I happened to know that the landlord had bought the house, shortly before, for £1,750. If he could not make his vast profits by raising the rents substantially, he hoped to do so by selling the house to the tenant at an extortionate profit.
I was delighted to read in the Report a comment that immigration into London has not been a cause of overcrowding in the London area. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] It says that the housing difficulties experienced by immigrants have been the result and not the cause of the real trouble. I am particularly pleased because, in areas where they are many immigrants, such as my own, people are apt to blame the wrong cause. They blame the apparent visible cause. When people tell me that, I remind them that, in pre-war days, constituents coming to me about their housing problems often used to say, "It is outrageous that accommodation in this neighbourhood is being taken by foreigners." On asking what they meant by "foreigners" I frequently got the answer "They come from Wales." Anybody who comes into London from outside is regarded or was regarded as being a foreigner. My hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary will be aware of this in another part of London.

Mr. Molloy: If they were coming from Wales, they were probably coming as missionaries.

Mr. Strauss: That may well be.
The most interesting and constructive part of the Report is Chapter 12, which gives the comparisons with the protection afforded to tenants in regard both to rent and security in other countries. The Table on page 216 is particularly illuminating, because it shows that London is the only one of the nine capital cities examined by the Committee where there is no rent control over the majority of privately owned lettings. It is the only city where there is no effective control over the rent and security of those living in such tenancies. That is an outrageous state of affairs which no doubt my right hon. Friend will rectify in his coming Measure.
I am particularly interested in this comparison between the protection afforded against landlords to tenants in the capitalist country of America where it is thorough, comprehensive and effective, and our neglect of this in London. This comparison was one of my favourite themes in my General Election speeches. It is a shameful situation. In New York tenants not only of low-class property but of good-class property are protected, through effective legislation administered by the city council, from being turned out improperly or having their rents improperly increased. The rents are fixed by an independent tribunal which takes account of the landlord's interests just as much as it does of the tenant's. As far as I know, the system is accepted by both landlords and tenants as being a fair way out of the difficulty of fixing a reasonable rent. The landlord feels that he is not exploiting the tenant, and the tenant feels that, as the rent has been fixed by independent people, it is not unfair and he is prepared to accept it.
I hope that my right hon. Friend will incorporate measures along these lines in his Bill. I am sure he will. In New York tenancies up to £1,000 a year are protected in this way, but if there is a family which has more than three in the household, there is no limit. Whatever the rent may be, the tenant is safeguarded against eviction and undue increase in rent. It has been suggested that if such a proposal were incorporated in our law, it should be applied only to the lower-rented tenancies—I am glad to see my right hon. Friend shaking his head—and that it should not apply above a certain low limit.
I am glad to get an indication that that will not be so in his Bill. The one thing that I do not accept in the Milner Holland Committee's Report is its belief that there is no shortage in London of flats or rooms to let at a range of £400-£500 a year. That is not true. Of course, one can get some rooms at £8-£10 a week. If they are rooms belonging to a housing trust, one may be able to get two or possibly three rooms at that rate. But if it is a private landlord, for that rent one probably can get only one or at the outside two, wretched rooms. There is colossal pressure by professional people earning £1,500-£2,000 a year seeking decent accommodation in London for themselves and their families. Many of them are living in misery comparable with manual workers earning £15-£20 a week.
Moreover, with the increasing standard of life of professional people and the fact that the number of rooms and flats of this sort is not increasing, the pressure or this type of accommodation will increase. The scarcity will become greater and prices will rise. Therefore, I hope that my right hon. Friend will ensure that the range of rents which will come under his new legislation will be high and comparable with that in New York.
The Minister is on the eve of presenting to the House a Measure which I believe may be an historic one for improving the housing conditions of the people in London—and maybe of the whole country—and in particular removing their present sense of insecurity. He has a great opportunity of righting some of the grave wrongs and injustices that have too long brought distress and tragedy to many of our people. He has the opportunity of making a reality of the principles of social justice for which the Labour Party stands. In his task he will find that he will be greatly helped by this authoritative Report, and in carrying his proposals to fulfilment he can expect the enthusiastic support not only of every hon. Member on this side of the House but, I am sure, of every hon. Member in the House and of every decent person in the country.

7.13 p.m.

Mr. Robert Allan: I am sure that every hon. Member on this side of the House welcomes the last sentiments of the right hon. Member for

Vauxhall (Mr. Strauss). If the Minister's new proposals are to achieve an improvement in the housing conditions of our constituents in London, then I am sure that my hon. Friends will support them, too. But I would put in a caveat. No one has yet mentioned conclusion No. 5 on page 187 of the Milner Holland Report, which indicates that nearly 50 years of rent control, including haphazard decontrol, have not led to any real relief of stress in the London area. Having made that caveat, I am ready to judge on their merits the proposals which come from the right hon. Gentleman.
The right hon. Member for Vauxhall expressed surprise that so many of his constituents were subjected to intimidation when they were controlled tenants. This has surprised me, too. This is backed up by the Report, which says that of the cases which it examined—I think there were 953 cases of intimidation—more than half, 517, were in uncontrolled tenancies. This has caused me some surprise. But it also means that all the blame for intimidation cannot be put on the Rent Act, because those tenancies were not affected by it. They were uncontrolled tenancies anyway before the Rent Act was passed.
I was very moved by the examples given by the right hon. Gentleman from his constituency. I could give similar instances from my constituency, though most of it escaped the most violent form of intimidation. It is only recently that the worst aspects of this have come to my notice in my part of Paddington. It would be ungenerous of me not to say that my violent reaction to this moved me to a feeling of gratitude that my colleague in Paddington, the hon. Member for Paddington, North (Mr. Parkin) raised these matters and brought them to public notice. But, having said that—

Mr. B. T. Parkin: Wait for it.

Mr. Allan: —I think it is very necessary that we should get the thing in proper perspective. I am told that there are 700,000 private tenancies in London. This Committee, sitting for 18 months, produced only 1,589 cases of abuse. But even if we double that figure, taking an annual average of 3,000, and not by any means are all of them intimidation, that is only a half of 1 per cent. of all tenancies


in London. Though one must be sickened by and deplore these things, one should not, I think, generalise from these very sordid particulars.
I am very glad that the right hon. Gentleman will be introducing legislation along the lines of the New York system. I have examined it, as the right hon. Member for Vauxhall has, and I support it.
The Report lists the pressures which are responsible for the overcrowding of London. None of those pressures are to be regretted. My right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) detailed them. None of us can object to any of the reasons given. Indeed, if London does not act as a magnet and does not attract people it will become dead and there will be far larger areas of London made derelict by under-population than the relatively small number of areas made derelict by over-population today. This increase in London is going to continue, and we must accept it. Therefore, we must tailor our housing policy to it.
This pressure comes not only from those who want to live in London but from those who must live there. These are mainly people of relatively low income whose work is to service London. They are concerned with transport, hospital services, communications and with general maintenance. Ideally those are the people who should be council tenants. They should have priority because of their work. Of course, I realise that it is not practicable to do this at once, and there would be grave drawbacks, social and others, if this policy were fully implemented. However, I think that, by and large, local authorities should alter their housing priorities so as to give higher priority to those whose work demands their presence in the centre.
This, of course, must be coupled with some other form of provision of accommodation outside London in preparation for the time of retirement. It is no good filling up the vital space at the centre with key workers and then finding, when they retire, that they have nowhere else to go. I have canvassed people in my constituency and they would be delighted with such a development.
This would help, to some extent, with certain categories. But then we come

back to the question which we have been discussing most of the afternoon, the question of what is to happen to the private rented houses. I repeat what we said before, that the Committee came to the conclusion that there could be no solution without making use of this type of accommodation.
The right hon. Gentleman blamed private landlords for not building in London. But in London there is not the land for either private landlords or councils to build on, so that private landlords have to go more and more towards conversion. Page 113 of the Report states the difficulties concerning the conversion of old Victorian houses in the part of London which I represent, Paddington, and in Kensington as well. The point is that these conversions are difficult. Because of that, as the right hon. Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Bellenger) said, they are extremely expensive.
When such conversion takes place—even when controlled there is a permitted increase in rent—the rent becomes far too often too high for the existing tenant to benefit from the conversion. The result is that the property either attracts a different type of tenant, who does not really need this kind of house, or it is sold. The original tenant who was seeking lower-rented property is simply squeezed out, as the Minister said. This, in turn, highlights the other subject about which we have been speaking today—subsidies.
The Report says quite clearly in the tables at the end and in Chapter 3, I think, how the tax advantages at present given to owner-occupiers are, in fact, housing subsidies. One hon. Member said this afternoon that it was obvious that we must continue this system still further. It can be done, but I notice in the present issue of the Economist that it is said that the medium-priced house which we have been building in London and the South-East costs £4,250 and that the average manual worker, if he is to keep the cost of his accommodation within one-quarter of his income, can borrow only £2,590, so it will be seen that house purchase is right out of the ken of many of our constituents who come to see us.
I still think that owner-occupation has a great contribution to make to solving housing difficulties, but it is certainly


not going to be the universal answer. There must always be rented accommodation. Those who rent from local authorities receive subsidies—and pretty substantial subsidies—as shown in the tables. They also have a fairly substantial hidden subsidy in that the local authorities in equalising the rents between older properties and modern properties can subsidise the tenants in the modern properties. Some of the big companies can do that too. Where they own pre-war property they can use it to subsidise the high rents of modern purpose-built rented accommodation in the centre.
The small landlord, however—and he is the man with whom we are mainly concerned—cannot do that, and neither the small landlord nor the big landlord can give the rate subsidy available to local authorities. What all this boils down to is that we cannot subsidise the public sector, give tax benefits to the owner-occupier, and, at the same time, expect the private landlord to provide accommodation at competitive prices. Somehow or other, this accommodation has got to be subsidised.
I am not in the least doctrinaire about this. I do not mind how the subsidy is paid. I do not necessarily want it to go into the pockets of the landlords. Why should it not be similar to the farming subsidy? I believe that the Minister, who is very flexible in the matter, could work out a scheme whereby the selected tenant in the lower income group has his rent subsidised, thereby giving the landlord an economic rent for the property and so making it possible to give security of tenancy. It is only where rents are controlled at artificial levels that we get the system of Rachmanism.

Mr. Albert Evans: The hon. Gentleman seems to be putting forward a suggestion similar to the one put forward by his right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) earlier today. It appears that he would subsidise the private landlord, and with that, of course, he would couple security of tenure for the tenant and also, presumably, accept the control of the rent by the local authority or that in some way the rent would be controlled. The hon. Gentleman has advocated that as the policy of his party, presumably.

Mr. Allan: No, I am speaking for myself.

Mr. Evans: At any rate one hon. Member opposite is departing radically from the policy of the Opposition.

Mr. Allan: My right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston-upon-Thames made some reference to this, but my point is simply that we do at the moment subsidise the owner-occupier and the local authority tenant. We simply cannot expect to get private unsubsidised accommodation at comparable prices. Therefore, we have to get an element of subsidy into it as otherwise there will be no improvement. I do not mind how the Minister does it.

Mr. Frank Tomney: Will the hon. Gentleman indicate what he thinks is the dividend return on capital for private landlords?

Mr. Allan: I should not like to suggest what it would be. The Minister has all the available resources at his command and could no doubt say what it is. I should not like to hazard a guess.
If this policy were adopted it would certainly help to produce better accommodation. It would not necessarily produce more accommodation. Indeed, it might produce less, because space hitherto devoted to living would then have to be converted to amenity.
I am riding a hobby horse of mine when I say that I believe that the only way to create more housing is to increase densities. This matter has been touched on this afternoon and I will not enlarge on it in detail, except to say that we will never solve our housing problems in central areas unless densities are increased. I appreciate that there are a lot of arguments against doing this, but if one goes to any of the squalid areas and asks people, "Would you rather live in a higher density in a new tower block than in this ghastly multiple occupation house?" the answer is "Yes" every time.
When considering this matter from the social point of view it should be remembered that a large number of people, council house tenants and others, have motor cars and are able to take their families out of the central areas at weekends to enjoy open spaces. I am


sure that higher densities must come. Indeed, I think that that view is being taken now, because I note that the resistance to it is now expressed not so much on social grounds as on grounds of cost. This, too, could be overcome easily by full and profitable multiple use of every site to be developed.
Some time ago I had a scheme of building high over Paddington Goods Yards. The scheme would have covered a 16 acre site and would have housed 3,000 people. The rents would have been lower than subsidised council rents because—and I am, of course, speaking notionally now—the domestic rents would have been subsidised by the rents which could have been obtained from light industry, commercial property and offices. I consider that this is the only way of overcoming the higher costs of building.
There are sites in London where the sort of building I have described could still be done. We have the Rossmore Goods Yards and another obvious example is the Paddington Mileage Yard. I hope that the Minister will do everything he can to press on with this type of development. The latest information I have is that those projects have been put back again. I see the Joint Parliamentary Secretary shaking his head, which means, I hope, that he realises the importance of this type of development.
I suggest that the Minister looks not only at railway land and similar sites which could be filled in and built upon but at other schemes, such as the one about which I was speaking for High Paddington. As I say, it would have covered 16 acres and if he checks the files in his Ministry he will see that the B.T.C., with which I was in negotiations at the time, was in favour of the idea. I am speaking about 1951. At the time there would have been considerable advantages to the railways, which would have got a covered goods yard and a rent as well. One of the major difficulties then was getting rid of the steam, but since locomotives are now virtually all diesels that difficulty would no longer apply.
I am sure that this type of development must take place, though, equally, it need not apply only to railway sites. There are plenty of other sites which

modern building techniques now allow us to develop. One can see, for example, when coming to London Airport the disused sand and gravel pits lying flooded and derelict. I am assured by friends in the building industry that it is now possible to build on such sites. There is a special foundation method called the "inverted saucer technique" which make foundations strong and stable enough to build high on that type of site.
I worked out my High Paddington scheme with a man who at the time had a most imaginative idea for high community buildings in areas around London. The idea was carefully worked out and was called "The Seven Suns of London". One must, if one is to go in for that type of building, create a new concept of vertical building—of vertical communities rather than horizontal ones. I am sure that projects of this sort are worth considering. I know that the Minister is prepared to be imaginative in solving our housing problems. While he is grappling with what are difficult and immediate problems, I hope that he will not be frightened to take a fairly long look ahead.
To sum up, my main points are these. We must accept that London will continue to attract people. Let us, therefore, try to work out schemes whereby we can provide houses for them. One scheme must be to see that subsidies are available to low-income, selected tenants of private properties let at economic rents. We must also accept the idea of higher densities and we must go for all kinds of building sites which modern techniques allow us to use. We must develop them on the best possible multi-use basis. If the Minister, in any of his forthcoming measures, produces ideas or schemes which will move in any of these directions he will have my support.

7.36 p.m.

Mr. B. T. Parkin: It is always slightly embarrassing to speak following the hon. Member for Paddington, South (Mr. Robert Allan), not only because after all these years he is a personal friend of mine but because I know, and he knows that I know, how much of what he says springs from personal knowledge and conviction and how much from political prudence.
I know that he knows—and that his right hon. Friend who will wind up for the Opposition knows—a great deal more about the origins of these problems than he sometimes dares to raise in a debate. Of course he knows. Of course it is not for nothing that we have had discussions outside the Chamber, in the Committee corridors and so on, over the years. We both know which points he accepts and which points he must walk gingerly over because of political pressures—and which view of them he does not yet accept because he is so stupid and has not yet understood it. Every now and then I get a bit enraged because the hon. Gentleman will not see what seems to me by now to be perfectly simple. If he will allow me, I will not comment on his speech bit by bit because inevitably, as I make my own speech, it is bound to be a counterpart to what he said.
In the short time that is available to me I must spend a moment paying tribute to all those who were responsible for compiling the Milner Holland Report. I am sure that everyone who has read it will agree with me. If mine is a personal tribute I hope that it will not diminish its value. I find nothing in it with which to disagree and not a point is hinted at that has not been discussed by me at some time during the last 10 years in Committee, late night debates and on other occasions.
The perceptiveness and delicacy with which, combined with a scientific and scholarly discipline, its ideas are brought together in perspective deserves high tribute indeed. It is a great help to all of us who must now say, "The argument is over. We can now work from the Report. The facts are established". The outstanding value of the Report is that it stretches far beyond the terms of reference to which the Committee had to refer from time to time in restricting its comments.
It insists time and again that security is the basic thing we must achieve. This goes far beyond housing. In saying a word about poor old Paddington 1 hope that Paddington will be recognised as being something more important, more interesting and more inspiring for the future than a little overcrowded borough which got defeated because it could not

cope with the problems which were on top of it. It is much more than that. I have claimed, and I think that my constituents in Paddington accept, that Paddington is, in a way, the Jarrow of the 'sixties. It is an example in the second half of the century of where the fundamental malaise has not been understood until now even by the inhabitants of the area. It was a long time before the people of Jarrow understood the significance of what was happening to them. Certain strains were at work which it was eventually seen would spread to the rest of the country if not tackled.
Paddington's situation could be summarised as my right hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Mr. Strauss) has recently indicated, and it is repeated all over the country. People are beginning to understand that the basic feeling of insecurity in the 'thirties rose from insecurity of employment, from industrial inefficiency; the basic insecurities of today spring from social inefficiency and stretch far beyond the evils of housing. We find there the roots of the malaise, the insecurities that bring such distressing symptoms as the purple hearts traffic, the juvenile delinquency, the failures in the educational system—I could go round the whole field of social welfare. It is hinted at in this Report, whose authors have, I am sure, seen this fact, and seen how important it is.
I hope that the Milner Holland Committee will realise—in case it feels in a moment of anxiety that it has worked so long but that, perhaps, all it said will not be taken into account—that we now have a situation in which the diagnosis itself is more than half the cure. We have the feeling in Greater London that there is an understanding of the situation. I myself feel as though I had been the amateur quack doctor, the amateur sociologist, with nothing more than a hunch, and now we have the hospital report.
Here is the report from the technical chaps—the X-ray, the blood count, the controls, the proper confirmation, the balance of the factors at work. A patient who has suffered a great deal of pain and distress from inexplicable symptoms can accept a report. "We have it sorted out now, old chap, and it will be a long


time before you are on your feet again."A patient understands that. I am sure that there is this kind of mood in my constituency and in this House. So the Committee has done far more already than merely set out the facts according to its terms of reference: it has gone a long way towards enabling the community to cure itself.
I should now like to go back for a few minutes to the situation that prevailed before the passing of the Rent Act, and before I had ever heard of Rachman. Those who know me best will know that I was campaigning against situations and symptoms like this before the Rent Act and before I had ever heard of Rachman.
In passing, in case anyone has a passion for meticulous accuracy of facts, I think that there is some little dispute about who started what. The right hon. Member for Leeds, North-East (Sir K. Joseph) has just come in and, if he cares to have it, I am happy to hand to him a historical priority of credit for this, because if as a Parliamentary Secretary he had not nagged me in the Committee corridor every time he saw me to start a housing association I would never have gone round looking for houses for sale outside my constituency.
I would never have got into Rachman's "phoney" estate office, or met the characters concerned, or have been able later to have given information to those who were so helpful to me when the whole thing was blowing up. Therefore, the right hon. Gentleman, who was then Parliamentary Secretary and later Minister, can at least have half of the credit of having incidentally—as I was lucky enough to do accidentally—drawn attention to it. But if the right hon. Gentleman is to share the credit, he must accept that he was uneasily aware then that there was a good deal more in this than there seemed to be.
To return to pre-Rent Act and pre-Rachman days, I would say that the arguments advanced by serious-minded people for some kind of intervention into the state of housing in London were put forward in all honesty at the time, but the remedies put forward have been disastrous. There were four main items. First, attention was called to the reduction in the number of dwellings

available for letting. Secondly, there was lack of mobility. Third, there was under-occupation of controlled tenancies. Fourth, there were problems of repairs of controlled dwellings.
Those were valid reasons for a courageous attempt to grapple with the problem. There is no time now to go into the way some people were deluded by the tyranny of abstract ideas into thinking that the Rent Act could work. If the Labour Party does not solve those four problems, it will break its neck. My right hon. Friend knows that, and I do not think that he will fail.
Lack of mobility is the most important matter. That is why I intervened to ask the right hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) whether he would not consider that it was the existence of only partial security of tenure that provoked this unwillingness to move sooner. That is why I believe that the Labour Party's policy of going back to complete security of tenure is vindicated by the Milner Holland Report, which not only establishes it as the main cause of trouble in housing but hints at its importance as a clue to other problems as well.
That will be the first thing to break—this log jam. As long as we have people in old, controlled tenancies, they will not move and we shall have under-occupation and, of course, we then have no chance to undertake repairs and improvements. The other things seem to follow, so let us have full and instant acceptance that the restoration of security of tenure at all levels will mean a far better chance of getting mobility.
The Committee says that we must have a radical reappraisal of present policies and procedures, but what we must do is to break that log jam somewhere. Once it is broken, we get a swirl, and we may get results far more quickly than our Ministers dare hope for or than I dare promise my constituents. I do not know how, but it can happen suddenly if we get things on the move.
As Minister, the right hon. Gentleman for Leeds, North-East has heard me before now challenge him to go back to his Ministry and look at everything again from A to Z; to put everything under the magnifying glass and see whether it was still valid. I have not the time now


to go through all the list, but perhaps I may mention just three items. We might have a completely separate technical inquiry into plumbing. As to two-thirds of our sanitary services, we are trying to catch up with the splendid standards set down by the L.C.C. in 1899. Things have been invented since then—new kinds of joints, of pipes, of devices—but no one has thought of any new kind of plumbing.
I have frequently said that if 1 per cent. of the money spent on research into whether we could live in outer space were to be spent on research into whether we can raise healthy children on the 14th floors of blocks of buildings, we might get somewhere. One question about space travel that must have been asked this week by a million children is, "Mummy, daddy, what do they do when they want to go to the toilet?" Well, let us ask them. Let my right hon. Friend the Minister ask his right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary to ask those concerned, because other devices in plumbing are being developed. Everything one can think of, except these basic domestic amenities, have been transformed by the Japanese—the tape recorder, the telephone, the portable radio, the motor cycle are unrecognisable. It is still necessary to use two gallons of water after a typist has got rid of her cup of tea before she goes to catch the bus. It should not be necessary any longer, because, even if it costs a great deal of money to invent these new devices, we are not installing expensive plumbing; we are saving rooms.
I have a luxury bathroom in an old coal-hole under The pavement. I have invited successive housing spokesmen on the Front Benches to come and drink sherry in it, but they have never come. When we were starting on it, after we had got the floor dug out and the preliminary drains laid, those doing the work came to me and said, "Mr. Parkin, this is going to be terribly expensive. We have already spent £100", to which I replied, "You are not installing a bathroom. You are saving a room". Any room in any house in London is worth £1,000, so if one can install one's conversion without using up a room and if one does it at less than £1,000 one is making a profit.
Another point which emerges again and again in the Milner Holland Report is

the astonishing shortage of small dwellings. Some people, even the local authorities, say—I do not want to spoil my relationships with the Ministers. Neither of them would speak to me for a month the last time I spoke about what the L.C.C. was doing about single people. But it is still going on. It is still being said that it is easy for a single person to get alternative accommodation. Milner Holland says that it is not. It is not. It is an extremely important point. I hope that the Minister will look at this from all possible angles.
I want to take up again the point about density. It is no good fighting a rearguard battle to defend densities and then surrendering en bloc every 20 years and saying, "We can pack them tighter." If we are to look at densities, we must ask—densities for whom? I beg the Minister to study what I have suggested before, namely, the idea that there should be an established density for the settled families who have to rear children and who need the full range of local amenities and that we should take a very different attitude towards those who live in single-room households, many of whom are living in London for only a short time. They are transits, migrants, students, trainees. Incidentally, they do not know where they live quoad the borough boundaries. They know a great deal about London as a whole, however. They live on the whole town, because they will learn all about it before they leave it.
When dealing with the old houses, we might well start in areas where there has not been a great deal of building for families. Up to now it has sounded crazy to talk about this being subsidised or undertaken on behalf of the municipality, but this could be a way out. The council should build high blocks of single-room flatlets which would release the older houses for conversion into maisonettes suitable for families, because families want space more than expensive modern accommodation.
Another thing Milner Holland hints at which the Minister will have to get round to is an employment policy for London—Gresham's law—which is militating against good quality industry in London, because the wretched slum factories from which young and progressive industrialists want to move are


scheduled for light industrial use and have a grotesquely inflated value for those who want to buy them up and pack them with some trivial, ill-paid employment, overcrowding them with people who have to overcrowd their homes instead.
Now, the sector of the private landlord. We ought to try to eliminate the emotive responses of suggestions of subsidies and who is right and who is wrong—politicians or landlords, and so on—from our minds and try to look at the problem in three separate parts. The first question is: who builds the house? The second question is: who ultimately owns it? The third question is: who manages it? Somebody said to me. "Mr. Parkin, do you think there is a place for the private landlord?" This is a purely academic question. He is here. He owns two dwellings in five in the London area. In case hon. Members opposite do not know, the remaining green fields in Paddington were built on some time ago. It is no good talking as though we were inviting fresh capital for fresh investment in fresh buildings on easily available sites. What we have to cope with is the existing situation.
Whether vast capital goes into new housing to let is a purely historical accident. It happened 110 years ago in Pimlico at the time of the California Gold Rush—Clementine's father taking part in the forty-niner. The gold was resting in the City of London asking for an investment outlet. It found it to coincide with the building of the big mainline stations. During the depression period a good deal of money was available: large insurance companies and others did not know how to invest. Of course they went into dwellings to let. It is only occasionally that this happens.
There is something else of immense importance. Every time an owner-occupier is created, a post-dated bill to oneself is being written, because in 30, 40 or 50 years' time there will be back on one's hands a property which has not been improved and which is in the hands of an unwilling legatee. Every new owner-occupier is eventually followed by someone who inherits the house but does not want it because he has his own house. That is the problem.

Some means must be found of tackling it. I have a few ideas on incentives, but no time to expound them properly. Why should they not be a disregard in Estate Duty if they are offered to the local authority at the district valuer's price? This is the sort of house that gives us really more worry than those which are characteristic of the abuses to which Milner Holland referred. The Milner Holland Committee gave Rachman just about what he is worth in the Report—two pages out of 450. Nobody is happier than me. Rachman was a very useful spotlight for calling attention to a problem which has now been investigated in the wider field. A much wider field than house-ownership is that of the unwilling legatee who gets something on his hands that he does not know how to manage and does not know how to deal with. This problem must be examined.
The problem of the cost of improvements must be faced. It is politically impossible for the Minister to offer an immediate higher rent to the owners of the old dwellings which still have controlled tenants. It is ludicrous to offer the landlord now a higher rent for an older property. This is rubbish. Equally nonsense was the suggestion made by the hon. Member for Paddington, South that the rents should be automatically reviewed according to the cost of living. It simply is not true that a house continues to get more and more valuable as it gets more and more derelict. This must be linked with a process of conversion and rehabilitation. This is one of the most difficult things the Minister will meet in his Bill.
Of course, it is obvious that the Minister cannot immediately offer an increase in rents for the old controlled properties. What I hope is that, as we get universal security of tenure and as we get decent controlled rents for reconditioned dwellings, people will be willing to move and so make room for a reconditioned house which can come on to the market again at a reasonably increased rent to meet the cost of the improvements.
One thing is certain: we cannot afford cheap rents. This is my last word. Let us not be deluded into supposing that there is any merit in preserving a city society divided into layers the lowest of


which can afford to spend on its accommodation only the type of rents that are now paid for the old controlled properties. Go and ask them. Of course most of them will want to spend more. I learned that lesson very early on when I used to ask people what wages they were earning and whether they could really afford to pay more than 10s. 9d. for their basement flats. They used to pay, "The family next door went into a council flat. They now pay four or five times as much, but for the first time in their lives they are saving money". They get a restoration of dignity and self-respect, and they can spend their housekeeping money more economically.
Everybody, of course, should be given the opportunity of raising their standard of living and paying more and getting more for it. It would be a great mistake if we did anything which would not greatly speed up the reconditioning of these old controlled dwellings. Once more we are not far away from a subject vastly more important than the temporary dfficulties in housing. It is the question of the individual's position in a City State, whether we can have grades of citizens doing different grades of work. We must work towards the raising of the dwelling standards of those who will have higher skills and higher standards of work which will bring in higher earnings.
The people on the Milner Holland Committee were very able people, otherwise they would not have been put on it. They must have had a great variety of personal interests and must have regretted the time they were asked to abandon and devote to this work. The Report is collective, but, however varied the personal interests of the members, I am certain that they will have been advanced by the work done on the Committee. The Minister will confirm that politics used to mean merely the art of learning how to live in a city, and the great problem before humanity is whether it can learn to live in cities. This Report coming at this moment will give inspiration to everybody outside the House. The sort of recriminations and slight twistings which are liable to occur among those involved in the political struggle will inevitably take place, but I hope that these will not be overheard by those outside the House who will now, I trust, allow us to get on with the job.

8.2 p.m.

Mr. Eric Lubbock: Although the hon. Member for Paddington, North(Mr. Parkin) may not have been the first to introduce the subject, he has played such a vital part in drawing the attention of the House to this matter and getting something finally done about it that I am pleased to follow him in the debate and to have listened to some of the interesting suggestions that he made. I agree, in particular, with his comments on high density development appropriate to single people. It is a pity that when we discuss this subject people say that they are either for or against high densities without considering the types of occupants who are to go into these high-density flats.
The hon. Member said that he agreed with everything in the Milner Holland Report. One of the most remarkable features of the debate has been that the hon. Member for Paddington, North and the right hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames(Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) have found something to agree about in the sphere of housing. I would not say that I agreed with everything in the Report and I will come to points with which I disagree later, but it is a very valuable source document, and that is all that it pretends to be. The Minister said that there was valuable information in it but no revelations, and it is for us to decide the policy in the light of the information. There is no policy there ready-made for us.
The Minister also said how dangerous it was to base policy on ignorance. I hope that after the debate people will do their homework more thoroughly. Some of the statements made could not possibly have been made by those who have read the Report thoroughly, and in this connection I respectfully refer to the right hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames. He asked whether it was reasonable to stiffen the law on abuse. If the right hon. Gentleman agrees with everything in the Report I refer him to page 228, where the Committee says:
We believe that this"—
that is the stamping out of the serious evil of abuse—
could be done by appropriate legislation.
Secondly, the right hon. Gentleman said that he was surprised to find that


abuses of the kind described in the Report did not constitute criminal offences. I refer him to page 177 where the Committee says:
It is surprising how few of the forms of misconduct by landlords constitute criminal offences…
What the Committee has done in drawing our attention to the abuses that take place is extremely valuable, particularly where the Committee goes on to say that legislation of the type available in New York would be appropriate. I hope that the Minister will get on with this in a hurry. I should like to hear from the Joint Parliamentary Secretary when he winds up the debate whether legislation against abuse will be included in the new Bill promised for next week.
The Minister did not have anything startling to say about policy and we did not expect it so soon after the publication of the Report. One idea which he mentioned was to use new town development corporation type of machinery in the centre of large cities. I am doubtful whether this would be a good idea. We already have in the centre of London powerful local authorities capable of discharging the task of rehousing provided they are given central help by the Government. Rather than create new ad hoc authorities whose powers, as I understand, would overlap those existing authorities, I should like to see the Government giving the London boroughs the financial sinews to enable them to carry on the task of redevelopment. It will be very expensive in those areas of high density multi-occupation, and it will be necessary for the Government to rethink the financial arrangements assistance to local authorities.
In a Report to the Liberal Party, a committee of which I had the honour to be chairman suggested in 1962 the creation of what we called a Land Development Corporation whose function would be to assist local authorities with the financial burden while they were in the course of redeveloping an area when the income from rates and rents in that area had fallen off and there was nothing to replace it. This enormous financial burden may well deter local authorities from using their existing powers of designating an area as one of comprehensive redevelopment and using the compulsory

purchase powers which they already have.
One of the most astonishing things in the Report is that the shortage is so much larger than we had anticipated. All the measurements of shortage in the London area have been based on what is called crude shortage, that is, the difference between dwellings and households. The Milner Holland Committee points out that that is only one small part of the problem. We have first these 1,500 families who are homeless and I emphasise that these are only the ones in the County of London. We have many homeless in outer London as well and these should be added to that total if we are to estimate the total need.
On this point I was interested in what the right hon. Member for Hampstead (Mr. Brooke) said about the homeless. He is totally misinformed on this. I refer him to page 94 of the Report, which says:
The families that lose the race for scarce accommodation are by no means all 'problem' families: the most common is the unskilled worker with wife and several children, and in many cases their below average income has been reduced by unemployment or sickness.
Practically every London Member could have told the right hon. Member for Hampstead that this was the case. We did not need the Committee to tell us, and if the right hon. Gentleman had referred to the Report which the L.C.C. submitted to the Milner Holland Committee he would have found that that was so.

Mr. Molloy: The right hon. Member for Hampstead needed to know, the Report would have told him, but he had not read it.

Mr. Lubbock: I agree. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will, perhaps, have learned something from this debate which he did not learn from his obviously somewhat cursory study of the Milner Holland Report.
There are many people in urgent need of better accommodation according to the standards set out by the Committee which embrace a combination of overcrowding and lack of facilities. There are 190,000 families in this category, as set out in Table 4.27, but to these we must add the number of families who have no bath. If we take the average of the two figures


given by the Committee, that is, 336,000 and 532,000, that gives 449,000 families in that category. In addition, there are the "concealed" households totalling 62,000. This gives a total of no fewer than 702,000 families in urgent need of better accommodation, so we can see from these figures that the shortage is at least three times as great as the figure of 150,000 given in the South-East Study.
The short-term problem is one of control. I was delighted to hear the right hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames say that he would assent to any measures for control of rents and security of tenure in the Greater London area. He agrees with the recommendation in the Report or page 227, where the Committee says:
Any measure which confers this security must carry with it a proper and well-considered measure of rent regulation".
It is good to know that we have all-party agreement on this and the Minister can go ahead with his legislation on the subject in the knowledge that it will have support from all parts of the House.
But this is tackling a symptom of the disease rather than getting at the root. The right hon. Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Bellenger) said that the main problem in Greater London was one of land. In my view, if we are to solve the housing shortage, this is the critical factor. The Milner Holland Committee refers on page 105 to the estimates given in the South-East Study. According to that Study, there is land remaining vacant for 30,000 dwellings, private redevelopment of low-density areas would produce 90,000 dwellings, sub-division of dwellings would produce 45,000 and general redevelopment would produce 25,000 dwellings, giving a total of 190,000 dwellings. Thus, is can be seen at once that the land available does not nearly match the size of the need.
If we are to consider what steps can be taken to solve the problem, the first thing to know is the availability of land over the next, say, 20 years in the Greater London area. The figures given in the South-East Study and repeated in the Milner Holland Report do not seem to be authoritative. I do not know where they came from, and I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary can enlighten us. It can be seen that they are unlikely to be very accurate when one considers, for example, that, between the 1951 and

1961 censuses, there was a net gain of 76,600 dwellings in Greater London arising from conversions, and this figure is a good deal higher than the 45,000 given as remaining available from this source according to the South-East Study. Therefore, I do not think that the figures are likely to be very accurate. If one takes the general redevelopment figure giving a further 25,000 dwellings, I find it impossible to believe that this is all we can get in the whole of Greater London.
In my own constituency, we have a redevelopment plan for the St. Mary Cray part of it which would give us an additional 1,300 dwellings if we were able to go ahead with it. In this connection, I put a point of some local importance to the Parliamentary Secretary. These redevelopment schemes are being stymied, or in this case sabotaged, by the actions of the Kent County Council. We put in for this redevelopment scheme some time ago and Kent referred it to the London Borough of Bromley. The London Borough of Bromley in turn referred it to several sub-committees, and we are now coming to the end of the life of the Orpington Urban District Council and part of its redevelopment scheme upon which we could already have embarked is not yet open to us to start. I wonder how many other cases of this kind there are in the whole of the Greater London area. If a local authority is ready with a scheme, having planned it and being prepared to start construction now on a part of it, every help should be given by other local authorities, the planning authority in this case, so that a start could be made as early as possible.
One final point in connection with these estimates in the South-East Study. In my view, quite a lot of land could be made available by the redevelopment of sites occupied by "prefabs" in the Greater London Area.

Mr. Freeson: indicated dissent.

Mr. Lubbock: I see the hon. Member for Willesden, East (Mr. Freeson) shaking his head, but I am sure that this is so. "Prefabs" were laid out at very low densities, and this is a function of their intrinsic nature. Experts have advised me that one could get approximately double the number of dwellings, at quite reasonable densities, on the sites they at present occupy.

Mr. A. E. Cooper: I confirm what the hon. Gentleman is saying. In the Borough of Ilford, we are now doing just that.

Mr. Lubbock: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for confirming what I am saying. This is an argument in favour of the Minister undertaking a survey to see what "prefab" sites there are in the whole of Greater London and what additional land could be made available by redeveloping them at reasonable densities. I wrote to the Minister about this at the beginning of January, but he did not feel that such a survey would serve much purpose. He agreed that these houses have lasted longer than they were intended to and that they were laid out in a manner which made a rather uneconomical use of land, but he went on to say:
before they can be removed, new houses must be provided for the tenants, and meanwhile such temporary houses while they remain fit serve a useful purpose especially for those authorities which have large housing problems".
That applies to every local authority needing to redevelop. It applies to the area represented by the hon. Member for Paddington, North. If his local authority is to redevelop, it has to decant tenants into some other property in the meantime. This is a very feeble argument which the Minister uses in correspondence with me against doing as I request. It would not cost him anything. I want him to ask the local authorities what "prefabs" they have in their area and what acreages they cover. He could then quite easily see what land would be made available by redeveloping the sites at reasonable densities.

Mr. Freeson: I shook my head because I have had some experience of this and I thought that the hon. Gentleman was going far too wide. What the hon. Gentleman has suggested can be done in some places—it is being done in my own district—but on many sites the "prefabs" were specifically put on areas of permanent parkland, and these are some of the larger "prefab" sites. One would be in great difficulty in including them in any kind of redevelopment policy because the sites must eventually revert to open space.

Mr. Lubbock: This is the kind of thing which the Minister could ascertain from a survey of the kind I propose. Of course, I do not suggest that the local authorities should redevelop sites earmarked for public open space. All I am saying is that there are many local authorities with "prefab" sites which, apart from that restriction, could well provide themselves with useful additional land if they were able to undertake the redevelopment.
I suggested to the Minister also that, because of the pooling of rents, some local authorities might be unwilling to redevelop as early as one would wish because the "prefabs", being fairly cheap, enabled them to keep down the level of rents as a whole whereas, if they were to redevelop the "prefab" sites, there would have to be a general increase in the level of rents. I put it to him that, if one were really to get a drive on this, it might be necessary to give local authorities some financial help in this matter. I am sorry that my suggestion has fallen on stony ground, but, now that I have raised the matter publicly, perhaps there will be some reconsideration of it.
Private rented accommodation has been the central theme of the debate. In spite of what has been said, I believe that private rented accommodation has to play a big part in Central London—because, after all, it exists. But we must not expect it to make a substantial contribution to the provision of new housing. We must try to keep these two things distinct in our minds—equity of treatment for the private landlords and the question whether we expect them to make a contribution to the supply of new houses.
The Milner Holland Committee made out a very good case for giving some tax concessions to the private landlord. I am not suggesting that this will help the tenant very greatly, but if a landlord is spending money on improvements on a property which has a life of 25 years, if he borrows over 25 years, and if at the end of that time the property has no residual value, I see no reason why he should not be able to recover tax on the amount which he paid into his sinking fund. That is a proposal also made in the report of the committee of which I


had the honour to be chairman. We said that the owners of dwellings to let should obtain relief for depreciation of buildings and improvements, which is perhaps an even more vital factor in the older properties of central London referred to by the Committee.
But even if we do these things, I do not think that the private landlord will make a very important contribution to the, people who are in the greatest need, which means those earning less than the average industrial wage and with large families. Hon. Members should look at the figures quoted in Table 3.16 on page 51 of the Report where the rents are compared between local authorities and private landlords for a new house costing £3,750. For local authorities the economic rent was £2 7s. a week and for the private landlord it was £7 1s. 6d.
Unfortunately, neither the table nor the chapter shows the make-up of the £7 1s. 6d. and to what extent it might be reduced if we made the tax concessions which the Report advocates, but I do not believe that it would be possible to bring those rents down to anywhere near the local authority level. First of all, the local authority can borrow at preferential rates either from the Public Works Loan Board, or because it is a borrower of great substance it can borrow fairly cheaply on the market, and can repay the loans over 60 years. These facilities are not available to the private landlord who, in addition, has to put his profit on top of all that. I very much doubt whether, even with the tax concession described in the Report, a private landlord could let a £3,750 house at less than about £5 a week and that would be of no interest to the bus driver or the postman with three or four children—and these are the people about whom we are talking.

Mrs. Lena Jeger: Will the hon. Member tell me why the development companies and the speculative builders who have turned central London into a gold mine should, in addition, get tax concessions?

Mr. Lubbock: I am glad that the hon. Lady made that point. Certainly these tax concessions should be limited to residential property let at economic rents and should not be extended to commercial or industrial property. The tax

position of commercial and industrial properties is quite a different matter and I am not referring to that or suggesting any change in the tax arrangements for those properties. I was dealing purely with the building of residential property or the improvement of existing residential property, which the Milner Holland Committee shows to be of such great importance.
I should be opposed to any suggestion that a subsidy should be paid to the private landlord, and I do not look on these tax concessions as a subsidy. We do not want private landlords to become a strong competitor for the scarce building resources available and this might happen if we demanded an enormous increase in the rocirc;le which they are playing in the provision of private houses. 1 do not think that this will happen if we limit what we do for them purely to giving a tax relief on their capital expenditure and also, as the Report advocates, on the money which they set aside for future maintenance.
For the housing associations this is of great importance because money is there set aside in the earlier years of the house which is not required until later. The Report points out that whether one goes ahead with a housing association scheme depends largely on the rent which must be charged in the first few years. Everything I have said applies to housing associations as well as to private landlords, and this question of money set aside to cover future maintenance is of particular importance to the housing associations.
Finally, I would make brief reference to what I consider to be the real cause of the housing shortage in Greater London. I refer to what the Committee said on page 22:
London's population growth is the outcome of a long-term, national pattern of economic development that cannot be controlled without major changes in that pattern.
While we are talking about the imposition of rent control, tax concessions to the private landlord and finding land on which local authorities can build, these all deal with the symptoms of the problem and not with its fundamental causes, and I disagree very much with the hon. Member for Paddington, North, who said that we must enable everyone who wanted to come to London to do so—that


we must accept the position and try to make housing available for them.
That is a defeatist attitude, and although this is not the time to go into the matter in detail I hope that we shall have economic policies which will encourage people to move away from London—encourage industries and commercial development to do so, and to go into the regions, into the North-East, or Scotland, for example, where the population drain has been taking place over so many years. Unless our housing policy is accompanied by a more radical policy for economic growth in Scotland, Wales, the North East and elsewhere, we might as well pack up, because in 10 years' time the problem will be with us again. We may manage to solve it for a few years, but the influx of people from the regions and from Scotland and Wales is continuing, and it will be an unending process unless this economic tide is changed.
I sum up by saying that there should be the maximum use of the available sites and an acceleration of local authorities' housing programmes wherever possible. The Greater London Council should be given greater housing powers if we are to have a radical onslaught on redevelopment and, particularly, if we are to make maximum use of industrialised building processes. It may be a little early to criticise the London boroughs, but why do we need a consortium between several boroughs when there is an authority covering the whole area which can do the same job? I appeal to the right hon. Gentleman to consider that point.
There should be acceptance of higher densities but only for those for whom higher densities are suitable—single people, married couples without children and those whose children have grown up and left home. We should continue to exercise severe control over office and industrial development in Greater London and greater efforts should be made by the Government and nationalised industries to move their offices out of London.
Greater use should be made of existing houses. The Minister said that the Milner Holland Committee had dismissed some of the popular explanations or solutions for London's housing shortage, among which was the better use of vacant properties.

But I remind him that the Committee did not say that a contribution could not be made towards solving the problem by bringing vacant property back into use, but that it stated:
No general explanation or solution of London's problems can be found along these lines.
There are 26,000 houses vacant in the County of London and 40,000 in Greater London. If we levied rates on vacant properties, some landlords who are keeping properties out of the market would bring them back in. That applies not only to residential property but to all the offices standing vacant in the centre of the city as well. That would help towards the solution of the housing problem by increasing the rate income of local authorities.
I believe that continuous research into the standards and conditions of London housing is needed. To have this Report is excellent but it presents a static picture at one moment in history. I hope, now that we have all agreed on its value, that the Minister will take steps to set up machinery for accumulating this information on a continuing basis.

8.31 p.m.

Mr. David Weitzman: In a leading article, the Financial Times described the Milner Holland Report as
…providing the foundation of a rational policy—clear, impartial and crammed with facts".
It also expressed the view that my right hon. Friend the Minister of Housing and Local Government was exceedingly lucky in having inherited it. No doubt some credit ought to be given—and one should not hesitate to give it—to the right hon. Member for Leeds, North-East (Sir K. Joseph), who appointed the Committee. It is nevetheless fair to point out that the right hon. Gentleman appointed it only at a very late date—August, 1963—and only then, I am certain from what I know, as a result of consistent and continuous pressure by the then Opposition to do something to alleviate the housing situation.

Sir K. Joseph: The hon. and learned Gentleman should know that the late Government announced the Committee in February, 1963.

Mr. Weitzman: I said—and I repeat—that I recall vividly the constant and continuous criticism made by the then Opposition calling up the right hon. Gentleman to alleviate housing conditions and that he appointed the Committee—he deserves every credit for doing so—but at a very late date. That, I believe, was the result of our criticism.
The Committee was appointed with a sense of urgency. It was instructed to report as quickly as possible. The Report itself points out how handicapped in its efforts the Committee has been as a result, and stresses the insufficiency of the data which existed and how formidable its task was as a result. In Chapter 13, the Report makes the important point that the appropriate research and intelligence units should be established and kept up to date so that all the necessary data is available when required. I was glad to hear my right hon. Friend say that he had already begun steps in anticipation of the recommendations of the Report that such units should be established.
The Report is far-reaching. It reveals a terrible state of affairs. We have been urged by right hon. and hon. Members opposite and by the popular Press—which is mainly, of course, of one colour—to forget political argument and to put aside political prejudice. But this terrible mess must be cleared up by the present Government and it is only right, before they embark on the task, that the country should appreciate the position, that the Government should emphasise that they have inherited the mess and that that mess exists after 13 years of Tory rule, despite constant appeals by the Labour Opposition to get something done. The Report deals shortly in Chapter 2 with the efforts of the Labour Government in the post-war years and does so very well. The years which followed undoubtedly saw a considerable number of houses built, but the picture which remains is miserable one.
What are the conclusions to be drawn from the Report? London must clearly depend for its housing on four agencies—first, the new towns; secondly, the boroughs and the Greater London Council; thirdly, to some extent the housing associations; and fourthly, private landlords. The Report discusses in Chapter 2 what was done in the new towns, but otherwise devotes comparatively little

space to this source of assistance in the housing problem. Obviously, in any short-term or long-term policy a great addition in the stock of assisted housing is required, and for this purpose all possible agencies for the provision of rented accommodation must be used to the full.
Under the 1963 Act, the new London boroughs have the major housing functions, an immense task which certain boroughs will find it difficult to perform effectively. Tackling the housing problem in London should not be a piecemeal operation and should not be left to individual boroughs. Borough housing lists and qualifications to be on them need scrutiny and revision, but the housing problem in London should be planned for and tackled as a whole by the boroughs with the active co-operation of the Greater London Council, so that the fullest advantage can be taken of utilising land in outer areas and outside London and so that special attention can be given to areas where bad housing is concentrated.
My right hon. Friend referred to this. I suggest that it would be wrong to leave areas where bad housing is concentrated to be dealt with alone by the borough where it is situated. The Report suggests that such areas should be designated areas of special control, but whether they are designated or dealt with in that way, the real point is that the attack on bad housing conditions in these areas should be with every weapon which can be used in the London area.
Housing associations have undoubtedly made a considerable contribution in the past. The Report says that in the immediate post-war years the assistance which they gave was marginal, but housing associations can assist and there is force in the observation in the Report that if they are to do so, a new legal and financial framework is required.
I now turn to a topic discussed a great deal today—the difficult question of private landlordism. According to the Report, private landlordism, whether by individuals, companies, or trusts, was responsible for 1,250,000 houses and flats in London in 1961, clearly a very substantial number. The Report says that the supply of privately rented accommodation has diminished and is still diminishing. But obviously in the foreseeable future private landlordism must


play a considerable part in the provision of accommodation and it is therefore essential that, while taking measures to meet abuses and to protect tenants, steps must be taken, in so far as we can, to encourage private landlords to provide such accommodation and to maintain it in good condition.
The Report pinpoints certain abuses which can be dealt with immediately and which should be dealt with without delay. It sets out 12 classes of abuses and they clearly constitute a formidable indictment. Very properly, the Press on the day after the Report appeared gave prominent attention to them. It is true that they were perpetrated by a minority of landlords, but it is disgraceful that they should exist. The Report points out that they are too numerous to be dismissed as being insignificant and they are evils which should be stamped out.
I heard the right hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) say that he would have thought that they already came within the criminal code. Clearly they do not, and I am surprised that he, as a member of the Bar, should have thought they did. The Report makes it clear that such conduct should be made a criminal offence. I was glad to hear my right hon. Friend say, when he replied to the right hon. Member, that he intends to deal with this. I hope that he deals with it effectively. There are precedents in other countries. There is no reason why such disgraceful conduct should not be made a serious criminal offence, and it should be dealt with as quickly as possible.
A further evil to which the Report draws attention is the payment of key money. Most Members who represent London constituencies have come across cases where landlords demand a considerable sum of money, often for shoddy pieces of furniture, and the tenant, because of his desperate need for accommodation, is compelled to pay the sum to get possession. Very often, he may have to leave the premises after a short time and there is no hope of recovering that sum. I think that my right hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Mr. Strauss) referred to an instance of that kind. There are many of them. I hope that the Government will look at this

carefully and will see that provision is made to deal effectively with this evil.
I must confess to a feeling of alarm when I read of the great number of tenancies in multi-occupied premises. I understand that about three-quarters of the property owned by individual landlords are houses and flats which are subdivided. They form, I understand, an appreciably higher proportion than the lettings of companies or other bodies. Overcrowding, the sharing of kitchen and toilet facilities which are often inadequate and sometimes non-existent and the absence of a bath are all marked features in more cases than one cares to think of and the law cannot be applied because of the lack of alternative accommodation which would follow its enforcement. Frankly, I confess that it seems difficult to know where to start with that problem. One can only urge that it is a special problem in itself and that it must be treated with expedition.
Apart from the provision of housing by every possible means, what immediate steps are necessary which follow from the Report? The case for security of tenure and, I suggest, for fair rentals is clearly made out by the Report, and machinery must be established to achieve both those ends. It is true that municipal authorities can be trusted to charge a fair rent, but even with them there is room for inquiry into the possibility of abuses and there is a case for considering security of tenure in connection with council tenants.
As private landlordism will continue to exist in the foreseeable future and as it forms one of the agencies which we must rely upon to some extent and, therefore, we must encourage it to build for letting and to let the property which it possesses, we must deal with it in a practical way.
I have been astonished today at the sort of remarks that have been made about granting subsidies to private landlords. It is amazing to think that the Opposition, when in power, regarded "subsidies" as a dirty word and that they should never be granted. Now, we have an almost universal plea from the benches opposite for subsidies to be granted to private landlords. One can almost see where the real interest of Conservatism lies. I should have thought that the answer concerning property of this kind lies in these two things: security of tenure and fair rentals.
No one suggests that security of tenure be the prerogative of the tenant which he can abuse at the expense of the landlord. The law will be framed so that the tenant is protected against the bad landlord but that the good landlord is not taken advantage of by the bad tenant.
I wish to draw the following fact to the attention of my hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary. The other day, I had a deputation of constituents, persons of limited means, who let rooms to tenants, furnished and unfurnished, and who depend upon the rents for their living. They complained bitterly of tenants who behaved badly and failed to pay their rents upon which they depended. Their only course was to sue them, with the consequent long delay and the probability of never recovering their money.
A landlord who provides accommodation has the duty of maintaining the property in good condition. If he does, no one suggests that he is not entitled to charge a fair rental so that he should be in a position to carry out that duty. In the same way the tenant, if he pays a fair rent and behaves reasonably, is entitled to remain in the premises as his home without fear of eviction.
The criticism which has been made from the benches opposite—the suggestion that a landlord should get a fair return for his money—is met by the fact that while the tenant gets security of tenure, the landlord will get a fair rent. If he gets a fair rent, he gets a fair return on his money. I hope that where complaint arises on the part of the tenant or the landlord about the adequacy of the rent, they will have the right to go to a rent tribunal and to get that tribunal to fix a fair rental having regard to all the circumstances. I am certain that the Government desire to tackle this problem to meet the interest of all, tenants and landlords. We emphasise the position of tenants because from what has happened in the last 13 years it is clear what a bad deal the tenants have had.
I refer to only one other matter. I read an interesting leader in The Guardian the other day which criticised the right hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames. It said these words about a speech made by the right hon. Gentleman at a recent Conservative conference:

It sharply illustrates the official Conservative attitude to governmental reform. By all means patch and tinker, but it is dangerous to build anew. That, in fact, is a summary of the Conservative record on administrative and governmental reform during their 13 years in office.
That was a comment on the last 13 years. The Tory Government pursued a policy of patch and tinker, and we now see the result. I hope that the Labour Government will face the problem boldly. I hope that they will use every possible means to bring some semblance of order out of the chaos in our housing situation, well illustrated by the Milner Holland Report. Citizens in London deserve a fair deal. I hope that the Labour Government will see that they get it.

8.50 p.m.

Mr. A. E. Cooper: There is no doubt at all that this Report which we are discussing today is a devastating indictment of Labour-controlled councils, and especially of the London County Council, for no matter what powers are available to local authorities these are as nothing if there is not willingness on the part of local authorities to deal with the problem.

Mr. Parkin: rose—

Mr. Cooper: I have only ten minutes and I cannot give way.
Hon. Gentlemen may ask what are these powers which local authorities have had and which they have not used. I accuse the Labour Party in the Metropolitan boroughs and I accuse the Labour-controlled London County Council of slothfulness and unwillingness to deal with the housing problem in London over the years. I will tell hon. Gentlemen why I refer—[Interruption.] Hon. Gentlemen opposite do not like this. They have been trying to dish it out all the afternoon. They are now going to take it for a bit.
I refer hon. Members to page 235 of the Report where it starts to deal with Acts of Parliament passed by a Conservative Government which gave powers to local authorities over their housing problems. I would call attention to the Housing Repairs and Rents Act, 1954, referred to on page 235, and I would refer to paragraph 1 on page 235 dealing with slum clearance, and paragraph 2 dealing with the standard of fitness for


habitation. I would also call attention to the Housing Act, 1961, referred to on page 241, and the details of improvement grants and powers about multi-occupation. Again, I would also call attention to the Housing Act, 1964, referred to on page 242, which deals with the problem of compulsory improvement.
All the local authorities up and down the country have had these powers in their hands, and so I say to the London County Council, which is the housing authority and the planning authority in London, that it has made no use of its power. Why has it not used its powers? One hon. Gentleman referred this afternoon to a particular development in his own constituency—I think it was to Camberwell—where a particular type of development was approved by the Minister—[Interruption.]

Mr. R. W. Brown: rose—

Mr. Cooper: Sit down. Hon. Gentlemen have had a good time this afternoon. Let them not get so excited.
In the speech of one hon. Gentleman this afternoon a reference was made to that particular scheme. It was approved for planning by London County Council, so the Socialist-controlled London County Council must have thought it was in the interests of the London County Council area, or why did the Council pass it? The trouble is that the Labour Party, which has controlled London for so many years, has failed dismally to deal with the affairs of London. [Interruption.] Hon. Gentlemen opposite do not like this medicine which they are now having to receive.
The Report also shows that by and large landlords behave properly, and we all regret the intolerable attitude and behaviour of a few. Happily, the majority of those bad ones are not British. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] The
Labour Party has a pathological hatred of landlords. In the eyes of the Labour Party all landlords are bad and all tenants are good. It seems to be thought that private people have a duty to provide at a loss accommodation for other people. Restrictions and abuse of private landlords have been piled upon them, but local authorities are not subject to

the same restrictions. This is one of the reasons why local authorities, in the main, can provide accommodation at better rents than the private landlord. Consider the advantages that a local authority has—an easier method of acquiring loans, the ability to borrow money for periods up to 60 years at better rates of interest, subsidies on its properties, authority—this is the important thing—to vary rents at will, something not permitted to private landlords—[HON. MEMBERS: "Yes it is."]—I am talking about controlled property.
The position of the private landlord is becoming more and more difficult in the big towns. It is possible, and indeed probable, that they will play a much smaller part in the task of housing our people in the years to come, which will be a bad thing. By itself, rent control is a bad thing and creates many of the evils about which complaint is made in the Report. It is interesting to note that nearly all the cases of abuse referred to in the Report are in respect of controlled property. Rachman existed because of controlled property. So long as demand outstrips supply some control is necessary, and therefore the first task is to build more and more houses.
By reason of our expanding population we need more of everything—hospitals, schools, factories, power stations and houses. Full employment, by definition, means that our labour force is used up and to talk of a crash programme to deal with any of this displays a total ignorance of the facts. We must encourage higher productivity by new methods and by using new materials. We need less interference from the Ministry of Housing and Local Government and greater speed and efficiency in getting decisions from that Ministry. Local councils must introduce differential rating schemes. I can never understand why Labour-controlled local authorities are, in the main, opposed to that. In some places it has been done, although under great duress, but many such councils refuse to do it. In the Borough of Ilford we operate a differential rating scheme which operates perfectly well. With the exception of a subsidy for old-age pensioners, there is no other cost to the ratepayers for housing in our town.

Mr. R. W. Brown: rose—

Mr. Cooper: I am not going to give way to the hon. Gentleman. If private landlords are to continue to exist in this country, they must be allowed a fairer return on the capital they invest. Today we have seen one or two shafts of light shed by hon. Members opposite, particularly the right hon. Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Bellenger) and the hon. and learned Member for Stoke Newington and Hackney, North(Mr. Weitzman). Not all tenants are good, let us get that quite clear. There are some bad landlords, but equally, there are some very bad tenants. I doubt whether any hon. Member has not, at some time or other, had a letter from a landlord who has found himself in difficult circumstances because of the actions of a bad tenant. Whatever we do in respect of the new Housing Bill which is to come before Parliament, let us make sure that we concede not only justice for the tenant but for the landlord as well. In this way we shall get co-operation from all sections of the community. If we introduce provisions into the housing legislation which are loaded against one section or another, it will create more difficulties than we have at present.
My final point to the Minister is in respect of an article which appears in this week's issue of the Economist. I think it a very good article, but it has been published so recently that one has not had the time to analyse it. Superficially, it would seem to have great merit. It contains four proposals which, because I must sit down at 9 o'clock, I cannot deal with. They appear on pages 1,242–3 of the Economist, and I should be grateful if the Minister could have these proposals looked into by his Department to see whether there is some merit in them.
This document is probably one of the finest documents which has been produced by a commission for a long time. It has tremendous social implications. Let us learn from the lessons which it teaches us.

9.0 p.m.

Sir Keith Joseph: My hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South (Mr. Cooper) generally succeeds in warming up a debate, but then the Minister did not exactly welcome the invitation of my right hon. Friend the

Member for Kingston-upon-Thames(Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) to treat this subject in a strictly non-political way.
I should like to add my tribute to all the tributes which have been paid from both sides of the House and from outside to the remarkable work of the Milner Holland Committee. Here we have a document which, as my hon. Friend has said, is a great social State paper: lucid, humane, cogent, put together in a remarkably rapid way and yet very nearly comprehensive. I say "very nearly" comprehensive because, of course, given the time and given the lack of material with which the Committee had to work, each of us is bound to find one point or another on which we should have welcomed more facts and figures. Nevertheless, it has been a remarkable job, and I add my tribute to the people concerned.
In the nature of things, as the Minister himself—who is not here at the moment—

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: Where is he?

Sir K. Joseph: —will accept, Ministers of Housing tend to work not for their own time of office but for their successors'. I mean no ill-will to the present Minister in imagining that, just as I set in hand this Report from which he benefits and as I am in my turn benefited from the preparatory work done by my right hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead(Mr. Brooke), so Ministers yet to come—Tory Ministers, I suggest—will garner the results, good or bad, of what the Minister proposes to do as a result of this Report. One thing we can undoubtedly accept. That is, that a Minister of Housing, of whatever party he be, must in future regularly gather the facts and figures which, up to now, we have not had sufficiently plentifully or regularly.
I was going to refer to some of the things which the right hon. Gentleman said, and I am sure that he will not think me discourteous if I say them, although he is not here at the moment. Of course, we accept that the right hon. Gentleman is very able. We also accept that he is passionately sincere. But I think that it is fair to say that his speech this afternoon was a little over-confident. He spent a great deal of time in attacking my right hon. Friends and me and not


very much time on his own policy. We shall, of course, wait to see what his proposals are to follow up this Report. I thought that his caricature of my right hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead was both offensive and inaccurate. My right hon. Friend, a most humane and dedicated Minister, was the man who initiated the South-East Study, the man who initiated the attack on multi-occupation. He did not deserve to be treated verbally in the way that the Minister did.
I have paid a tribute to certain personal qualities of the Minister and am now making references to what he said and what he did not say in his speech. The conspicious omission from the right hon. Gentleman's speech in his attempted indictment of Tory administration of housing was, I thought, his complete failure to mention a point which is constantly emphasised by the Milner Holland Committee, namely, the speed and trend of demographic change, particularly in London. The decisive fact is familiar to all students of housing. Although there has been a fall in the population of London, there has been an increase in the number of households for which separate dwellings have to be found. The Report makes plain that the fall in the average size of households, and, therefore, this increase in the demand for housing in London, has been taking place at an increasing pace, particularly since 1961.
That is why any attempt to pin the blame for the present overcrowding and misery in certain parts of London on the Rent Act falls completely wide of the mark, because these demographic changes have altered the nature of London's housing and the scale of need increasingly since 1957, when, as the House knows, the birth rate changed and the pace at which people married younger and the increasing rate of survival into old age began to make their impact.
The facts and the prospects of London housing are in this remarkable Report. Some we knew before the Report was published, but what was not possible was to judge the scale of the problem, the relative size of the evils of which we knew compared with the stock of housing. Now we know considerably more than we did. A summary of the Report would be to say, as the Committee says in many places, that amidst

general improvement of all aspects of housing there has been a concentration of misery and, indeed, a deterioration of the state of accommodation in certain limited, but still very significant, areas of Greater London.
But what, I fear, is even more to be borne in mind than this is the direction in which, by the nature of things, London housing is going. I draw attention to three points emphasised by the Committeee. First, it says in terms that it fears that, unless dramatic changes are made, there will be a total loss to the rented sector of all houses at present privately let. Secondly, it says that, whereas many of the conurbations are already facing the most massive obsolescence that they will ever have to face, this has not yet arrived for London. London faces at the moment desperate overcrowding and shortage, but obsolescence in London is by no means as acute, bad though it is, as it will be in 10, 20 or 30 years' time. The third thing that the Committee points out which seems to me to bode ill is that the trend to smaller households, which has already exacerbated the housing problem, is likely, in view of what is happening in other countries, to continue further.
In the light of the facts and of these trends, the House is obviously debating what should be the strategy of the Government. Here I must say that it would be perfectly possible to take the view that the free market would be the cure for London's housing need if—only if—we were to decide to let it work. But the free market would mean three things, some of which I do not think can be practicable in the case of London. First, it would need fair tax treatment for private enterprise. That seems to me to be perfectly practicable if the Government decide to do it.
Secondly, a free market solution would mean that effective demand had to be there; that is to say, that the people who need the dwellings have the money to pay for them or to rent them, and this would have consequences in respect of the earnings of people who work in London. I thought that my right hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead was absolutely right when he said that there was an even deeper issue lying beneath all the things found by this Report, and I suspect that one of the deeper issues is the fact that


people are working in London at rates of pay which do not allow them to provide an effective demand even if private enterprise could supply the goods.
The third thing which a free market solution would require is an ample supply of land, and that, it seems to me, is the real reason why I cannot suggest that a free market solution should be the one that should be adopted. We must recognise that in rejecting the free market solution we are, as it were, shackling the giant which could, quicker, I believe, than could be done by any other method, solve the housing need of Londoners. But to do that we should have to ensure ample supplies of land, and that would, in the view of most of us, create an ever-sprawling giant with an intensity of traffic generation which just would not be practicable. It would also involve creating an everincreasing London which would suck in more and more people and in which, therefore, the problem might never be solved.
If this be so, what strategy should be adopted by the Government? It is easy enough to talk in general terms. It should be to secure the building and improvement of housing and housing stock in London to the fullest extent practicable. Here I would add what may not be so acceptable to the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues: it is that I believe that that should be done by using every sort of housing management.
I would stress to the House the emphasis which is made by Sir Milner Holland and his colleagues on what they find the admirable habit of countries overseas, of using as many "centres of housing initiative" as possible. Of course, as the right hon. Gentleman has probably already found, and will find more and more, the key to tackling the housing problem is not just land; it is management, initiative, enterprise, be it public or private. The more people who for reasons of public service, duty, private enterprise or a desire to serve provide housing, maintain housing and improve housing, the better for the people of London and of the country.
Of course, we on this side of the House entirely accept that local authorities have a bigger part to play. This change in

the pattern of population, the increasing span of survival of people after retirement, the acceleration of slum clearance, with its corollary of more and more housing being needed for the elderly, the younger age of marriage and the increasing size of families all spell increased responsibilities for the local authority.
I think that the right hon. Gentleman might find it useful to have inherited not only this Report but also local authorities in Greater London which, however much the party opposite may have disputed the London Government Act, are at least sizeable enough to tackling housing on an effective scale.

Mr. Freeson: The right hon. Gentleman said that he and his colleagues accepted that local authorities had a big part to play. In view of the figures for the last several years quoted earlier by the Minister of the radical drop in local authority housing since 1955–56, can the right hon. Gentleman say when hon. Members opposite came to the decision that local authorities had a bigger part to play—in what year?

Sir K. Joseph: Local authority programmes have been growing up over the last, I think, speaking from memory, three years. The House must remember that large numbers of local authorities had come to the end of their most urgent need just about the time that the conurbations were ready to tackle slum clearance more decisively.
The fact is that the London boroughs and the L.C.C. were not using up the land which they had available nearly as quickly as I, for instance, as the Minister would have liked. The reason for this was not, as hon. Members opposite have consistently claimed, anything to do with the cost of land or the rate of interest, because, as the Milner Holland Committee says on page 131 of its Report, these were not the obstacles.
The fact is that local authorities cannot do everything. They cannot manage, improve and build on the scale required, and they must have the help of housing associations and private enterprise. Housing associations need, as the Committee shows, a different tax treatment from what they are now getting. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will take this extremely seriously. He will find that he will need private enterprise


for three different purposes. He will want private enterprise—I hope he will listen—to retain for letting the whole of the rented stock. He will want private enterprise to improve and convert and, I suggest, to build. For each of these three reasons he will need to take more seriously than he appeared to do in his speech the strictures on taxation which the Milner Holland Committee sets our.
It is true that my right hon. Friends and I did not, when we were in power, take action on the tax side of private enterprise housing. Perhaps we should have done, but the facts were not set out for us as clearly as they are in the Report. I ask the House to imagine what an outcry there would have been from hon. Gentlemen opposite had we tried to do what is now shown to be absolutely necessary.
I also hope that the right hon. Gentleman will take much more seriously than he appeared to do the risk of continuing losses of rented housing. On page 212 of the Report the Committee spells out the reasons for this loss. There is the pace of slum clearance, which is much faster in this country than in any of the countries with which the Committee drew comparisons. There is the fact that houses in Britain lend themselves to owner-occupation and subdivision much more than flats, which predominate in countries abroad. There is also the fiscal position and political uncertainty. I suggest that unless the right hon. Gentleman acts on at least some of these things he may find that the rented sector will decline even faster than now.
I welcome his assurance that he will obtain regular figures and facts, but if we on this side find that the shrinkage continues and that he has done nothing on the factors suggested by the Committee which are relevant to this he will be gravely to blame, and I thought that my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, North (Mr. Chataway) in his speech on this aspect gave an excellent reminder to the Minister.
I ask the Minister to take more seriously than he appeared to do the Committee's repeated stress on the fact that local authorities cannot do everything themselves. This is spelt out on page 223 and also in the heart of the conclusions on page 225. I hope, therefore,

that even if the right hon. Gentleman rejects the idea of subsidies for private enterprise, although other countries do so, he will look seriously at the fiscal disadvantages to both housing associations in particular and to private enterprise.
I hope that in considering subsidies for the private enterprise sector he will bear in mind the implications of what my right hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead said; for subsidies to local authorities are indirectly subsidies to private enterprise because they make possible the earnings and wages which private enterprise now pays to the workers of London. One way or another either the earnings must go up or some subsidy must be paid perhaps to private enterprise.
However, all this will be of no avail without land and without taking pressure of demand off London. The right hon. Gentleman spent so much time criticising things in his speech that he did not mention some of the positive steps he intends to take. I presume that part of his policy is to continue the former Government's regional policies of trying to take pressure off London and the South-East.
Land is, of course, at the heart of any constructive housing policy. We hope to hear from the Joint Parliamentary Secretary something about the present position of the South-East Study. This Study was much criticised during the election, but I am glad to see that the Government are beginning to use it bit by bit as we always thought that it should be used. I welcome the decision by the Minister to expand Peterborough, Northampton and Ipswich, and I welcome the decision to have a study for the Newbury-Swindon area. I hope that we will hear from the Joint Parliamentary Secretary some of the immediate developments—not the long-range ones but the immediate ones—which will bring added help to people in housing need in London.
However, when all this has been said and done there is a desperate need for more land for Londoners in London, and my hon. Friends and I know that the Joint Parliamentary Secretary will fight for every acre of land that he can get in London. That we know. That will


involve, as my hon. Friend the Member for Paddington, South (Mr. Robert Allan) stressed, the need to reconsider densities in suitable areas, but I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will tell us something of the present prospects; the imminence of housing in Woolwich, in the Lea Valley, in Croydon, Hendon, and Erith—although that was an L.C.C. initiative—and the position about railway land.
Between all those sites there may well be housing for perhaps a quarter of a million people—perhaps I am a little optimistic, and I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will give us his view. He and his right hon. Friend have inherited a G.L.C. and London boroughs which, between them, working together, as they must, should be able to produce, given the professionals—and the professionals may often be a problem—a more rapid attack on housing than under the old arrangements.
We on this side accept that while the pace of building is accelerated, it is altogether sensible to tighten the law against abuses, and we shall await with interest to see to what extent the Minister can apply the laws of New York to this country.
It appears from what the Minister says that he is adopting the recommendation of the Milner Holland Committee to increase security of tenure. As my right hon. Friend indicated, we shall study sympathetically the proposals put forward by the right hon. Gentleman, but I hope that he will not under-estimate for a moment the two great problems that are not, to my mind, fully enough explored by the Milner Holland Committee.
The first is the risk that anything the Minister does in the way of spreading and increasing security of tenure may only intensify the shrinkage of the rented sector. The right hon. Gentleman says that it could not get much worse—if that is his rather unscientific attitude to this very serious risk, I hope that his Parliamentary Secretary will spell out the relative risks a little more soberly—

Mr. Ivor Richard: rose—

Sir K. Joseph: I am sorry—I have only a few more minutes.
Let us look at this risk. The loss of rented stock occurs, as I have already said—and it is spelt out in page 212 of the Report—for a number of reasons. Clearly, the more a landlord feels that he is to be controlled and regulated the more the risk that he will take the first opportunity of vacant possession to sell his property. That was the position before the 1957 Rent Act, and that is the position now for decontrolled dwellings, and we may find—I hope not, but we may—that the result of what the right hon. Gentleman proposes to do—and, of course, we do not know that in detail yet—is to reduce still further the stock of furnished accommodation, above all, which is the only hope of new households and newcomers to London.
That leads me to the second implication of security of tenure which I find the Milner Holland Committee, unlike all its other work, has not fully explored. As the Minister said, the bulk of the misery at the moment is concentrated on the young families with low wages—[HON. MEMBERS: "And the aged."]—and only to a lesser extent, generally speaking, the aged, because they are just those who, on the whole, benefit from rent-controlled dwellings.
Where do these young families with heads of households generally under 30 tend to go? There are not many vacancies for them in local authority accommodation because most local authority vacancies are pre-empted by slum clearance, road widening, and so on. So the new young households tend to finish up in furnished accommodation, and half the tenants of furnished accommodation, and of the multi-occupied furnished accommodation, are heads of families under 30, with children. It would be very serious if anything the Minister did were to diminish this sector of accommodation.
In a fully controlled city, there is very little chance of vacant possession being available for a new household. We read from the Milner Holland Report that fully one-third of the decontrolled lettings are made available by the owners—the landlords—to either relatives or friends or people who are in need. But when all dwellings are controlled there is, first, the probability that nobody will leave them and, secondly, the probability that, if by death vacant possession is available, the landlord will sell them.
Therefore, for new households there is very small chance of obtaining accommodation in letting which is controlled, and by hypothesis these people cannot afford owner occupation. Therefore, I suggest to the Minister that there is a very serious danger that these new households and newcomers may find accommodation only as the subtenants of controlled tenants. I do not know yet what the Minister's legislation will be, but, unless he has a positive, sensible attitude to prevent the exploitation of subtenants and to guard against the exploitation of subtenants in the same way as we know tenants have in some cases been exploited, then he will make the lot of the have-nots even worse than now.
We cannot shirk this issue. Rent control and security of tenure will be fine for and will be welcomed by those who have accommodation, but it spells an even less promising future to those who have no accommodation. Now, those who have no accommodation admittedly compete for decontrolled and furnished lettings. They compete, as the Milner Holland Report tells us, with the rich, with the better off, as well as with each other. But if there is no empty accommodation because all the controlled accommodation is either full of privileged—I use the word obviously only to make a distinction here—tenants or is sold on vacant possession and if the Minister's policies—we do not know what they are in detail yet—reduced the furnished sector, the lot of the new household and the newcomer will be far worse than now.
We do not know what even the result of the Minister's—we know—benevolent Protection from Eviction Act will be. We welcome the drop in the number of homeless families of which he told us, but what he cannot tell us is how many dwellings which would otherwise have been available to let have been withdrawn from the market because of the Protection from Eviction Act. It may well be that the result of protection will be only to concentrate the over-crowded, with the sheer lack of rooms relative to population, into other equally unhappy concentrations. The only hope is more building, and that depends on land and it depends upon the maximum possible number of "centres of housing initiative", and it is on this that we look

forward to hearing the Joint Parliamentary Secretary.
Finally, in a rather more lighthearted way after what has been a very sober debate, may I tell the Minister that he is becoming a specialist in tantalising the public, a sort of intellectual performer of strip-tease dances. Only the other day, when he was discussing rates, the Minister told his audience that what he would like would be a local income tax, that that would ease the ratepayers' lot, but that a local income tax was not practicable. Then he said that what would be very helpful would be a sales tax, but he did not think that was practicable. He went on to say that what would really be a great help to the ratepayer would be a land tax, but he did not think that would work either.
In just the same way today at the end of his speech the Minister held out to the public a glimpse of a new town in London. May I tell the right hon. Gentleman that Minister after Minister has considered a new town in London. As the right hon. Gentleman knows very well, there is not the land for a new town corporation to do its normal function. If he thinks—he may well be right here—that local authorities need more professional help, I think that a new town corporation may be an instrument which could do much, as he said, for urban renewal. However, by his reference to a new town to help local authorities with urban renewal he surely gives the case that my right hon. and hon. Friends and I are putting in all seriousness to the Government. He accepts the Milner Holland Report only in part. He is rejecting the strong emphasis by the Committee that London's housing needs all possible help from private as well as public and as well as philanthropic enterprise.
We are not asking the Minister to commit himself to subsidise private enterprise. What we are asking him is to consider very seriously the present tax position as shown by the Report and as it affects housing associations and private enterprise. Let him at least look seriously at that. Let him recognise that other countries which are admired in this Report maximise the "centres of housing initiative". We wish him and his right hon. Friends well in dealing


with this clear, cogent Report and we hope that the Parliamentary Secretary can give us good news of the vital, above all, raw material—land.

9.31 p.m.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government(Mr. Robert Mellish): I have heard the right hon. Member for Leeds, North-East(Sir K. Joseph) speak on many occasions. This again was a very good performance. He said that my right hon. Friend has recently been committing a kind of intellectual teasing of the public. That is his personal view, but I would say that my right hon. Friend in the course of three months has done more to bring happiness and contentment to more people in London than the right hon. Gentleman ever did. He has done it by simply bringing in one Act which the party opposite could have brought in, because they knew the facts.
The right hon. Gentleman asked for figures about local authority building and he said that it had been stepped up in the London region in the last three years. We had better get this on the record. [Interruption.] I am talking of London because I thought that this debate was about London. In 1961, 13,000 local authority houses were built out of a total of 24,000. It is true that the figure went up to 14,000 in 1962 out of 25,000. In 1963 it was 15,000 out of 26,000, and in 1964 it was 15,500 out of 29,000. This compares rather miserably even with the Conservative record in 1954 when local authority building was 22,000 and in 1955 when it was 19,000.

Sir K. Joseph: The hon. Gentleman knows very well that in the earlier years the L.C.C. was building on its out-county estates. He should give the number of houses built for Londoners outside London in new towns, expanded towns and by private enterprise.

Mr. Mellish: The right hon. Gentleman is now asking for figures which I cannot give off the cuff. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] I am not one of those dishonest people who throw figures about for party purposes.
The right hon. Gentleman's whole approach to the debate was that he virtually takes credit for the Milner

Holland Report. He said that what he did was to initiate the Report and, by implication, that he had somehow done us a great favour. At the end of the day he may well have done us that favour, but that was not his intention. I shall prove later that the right hon. Gentleman had all the knowledge at his disposal before the Milner Holland Committee ever reported.
The right hon. Gentleman is quite right to say that there were no facts in his Department. That is a fair comment. He was there for a number of years and his party for 13 years. He talked about taxation of private enterprise and housing associations. I say straight away to him that my right hon. Friend shares his views about the taxation of housing associations. My right hon. Friend said so this afternoon and he will be looking at the matter to make appropriate recommendations. The party opposite has already tried hard to give benefits to private enterprise. It brought in the 1954 Act, designed to help private enterprise. Incidentally that did not succeed and the party wiped it away with the 1957 Act which supplanted it. Private enterprise has been already tested.
I am not speaking against private enterprise housing. A great deal of it is good, but do not let us allow it to go out from the House that all that is needed now is special taxation privileges. The right hon. Gentleman had the temerity to talk of special agencies for the building of houses for those in greatest need. What stuff and nonsense this is for London and what stuff and nonsense is this idea that we must have a multiplicity of organisations. We already have the local authorities, the greatest possible organisation we could have, at our finger tips. Why talk about other great agencies which have yet to be created?
The right hon. Member for Hampstead (Mr. Brooke) made an extraordinary speech. I have listened to him on many occasions, too, and today he had something to say about homeless families. I was convinced that he had not read the Report. He could not have talked about homeless families in the way he did if he had read it. The right hon. Gentleman knows only too well that the


majority of those to whom we referred in debate after debate in the House were not the feckless type. They were genuine victims of landlords, genuine victims of his own legislation. For him to have said, in effect, even at this stage, that the problem of homelessness always involves the problem family in some way or other and that this is something we must live with was really quite extraordinary. I am amazed by the right hon. Gentleman's attitude in these matters. He always conveys the impression that he has a great human outlook, but, somehow, in his actions he shows the opposite.
The speeches of hon. and right hon. Members opposite took the line which most of us thought they would take. The party opposite now says that we should treat this subject as non-political. Housing is to be non-political. This was the line adopted by the right hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter). He pleaded for a non-political approach, although, of course, he does not know much about housing anyway. I have never heard him speak in a housing debate before. I was not at all impressed by the right hon. Gentleman's speech. He asked for details of our ideas but he gave none of his own, and his great plea, like that of his hon. Friends the Members for Lewisham, North (Mr. Chataway) and for Paddington, South (Mr. Robert Allan), was that housing should somehow be taken out of party politics.
I have to say, because I know that there are so many Londoners who want me to say it, that the 1957 Rent Act has created more unhappiness among the people of the Greater London area than any other Act that I can recall. In the Second Reading debate on 21st November, 1956, that great humanitarian and great politician, the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) said:
This Measure…will halt the drain upon rented accommodation, it will release additional accommodation which is under-used or wasted, it will arrest the deterioration of millions of houses…it will give to persons who are moving or setting up home the opportunity to find accommodation in the market…It will end long-standing injustices between tenant and tenant and between landlord and tenant."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 21st November, 1956; Vol. 560, c. 1775.]

That is what the right hon. Gentleman said then. I can forgive him saying it in those days because he may well have believed it. But I ask right hon. and hon. Members opposite, do they believe it now? Do they believe that that is what their Rent Act achieved?
What I cannot forgive the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West for is this. In spite of Milner Holland, he still argues—he wrote an article in the Sunday Times about a fortnight ago to this effect—that the free market is the real answer. We have heard from the right hon. Member for Leeds, North-East that he does not agree with that, not in London anyway, and I gather that the right hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames does not agree with it. Then let us be clear about it. This is supposed to be a non-party matter now. How many hon. and right hon. Members on the back benches opposite would agree? The right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West was a very powerful Minister. He is now on the back benches and he advocates his view publicly. Will the Leader of the Opposition disown him? Will he make a speech in the country saying that he dissociates himself from his right hon. Friend's view? While we have people like the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West taking the view about housing today that he does, how can the party opposite talk about this being a non-political issue?
In 1957 we pleaded against the Rent Act, that highly political Measure. The immediate effect of the Act was 380,000 properties decontrolled, and nearly 800,000 dwellings have been taken out of control since. The whole theme of the Milner Holland Report, the theme that really matters to me, is the insecurity of tenure, the fear and intimidation which has been the feature during the past few years. On page 179, the Milner Holland Committee refers to the great insecurity of tenure there has been throughout the past few years and says:
The prime cause of hardship is insecurity of tenure in conditions of shortage.
I challenge every hon. and right hon. Member opposite. Do they deny that their 1957 Rent Act accentuated this? Does anyone deny it? If they do not deny it, they must accept their full share


of responsibility for the misery and hardship which Milner Holland has described.
Let us remember this about those who now want to take party politics out of housing. In 1958, the Tories became afraid of their own Rent Act. Why? Because a General Election was pending. They therefore brought in an emergency Measure, the Landlord and Tenant (Temporary Provisions) Act, 1958. When he moved the Second Reading on 24th April, 1958, the right hon. Member for Hampstead spoke again. He said:
…I remember laying stress on the relevance of easing and smoothing the transition, because it was no part of the Government's policy that acute hardship and homelessness should befall people who in no way deserved it."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 24th April, 1958; Vol. 586, c. 1167.]
Can the right hon. Gentleman say that now, in the full knowledge of the Milner Holland Report that 250,000 people in London are living in fear, with thousands rendered homeless because of the Conservative Government's legislation?

Mr. Brooke: The hon. Gentleman is now denying what the Milner Holland Report said, which was that the Rent Act was not one of the causes of the present situation.

Mr. Mellish: That remark only confirms my view that the right hon. Gentleman has not read the Report. The 1957 Act created and aggravated insecurity of tenure in London more than any other Measure, and the right hon. Gentleman knows it. If I were to call him a hypocrite and a humbug I know that it would be out of order, but history will say it of him—of that, I am certain.
We are told that the Opposition did not know about this situation. We are told that they knew nothing of the problem and that the Report has come as a great surprise to them. What stuff and nonsense. Let us nail that lie. The danger signals were flashing all over London at the end of the temporary Measure which held the position for the 1959 election. Homelessness reared its ugly head all over London and it could be seen.
A deputation went to see the right hon. Member for Leeds, North-East and told him the seriousness of the position. What did he do? Nothing. He gave a lot of sympathy but that is all we got out of him. The truth is that the Milner

Holland Report only tells a story that most of us on this side of the House already knew.
This is a story of the past of which I am ashamed and I am not going to allow the Conservative Opposition to disclaim their responsibility in large measure for the evil, the sadness and the heartache that the Report exposes. Do not let any Labour Member of Parliament ever forget that a lot of the responsibility for this heartache rests on the party opposite, which now claims that there should be a non-party approach.
I want to answer some of the questions raised by the right hon. Member for Leeds, North-East with regard to what is to be done about the problems. When I was given the job of Joint Parliamentary Secretary, with special responsibility for London housing, by the Prime Minister, the first thing I tried to do was to find out something of the size of the problem. But before I go on to deal with that I want to pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Minister of Housing and Local Government. Whatever I may or may not do in my job, I cannot blame him. He has given me all the responsibility and support that I should have in order to do the job. If I fail, it will be because I am not able enough or big enough for the job.
As I have said, I first tried to find out the magnitude of the problem. Even on the assumption that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Economic Affairs has enormous success in his regional planning in stopping the drift to the South, we in London face the particular problem at this moment of having 200,000 more households than dwellings, with an increase in those households of 20,000 a year. By 1980 we have to find homes for 1 million Londoners outside the conurbation.
We have 40,000 dwellings in vast tenement blocks that are a disgrace to society. Our known slums are still vast in number. Much of London has not been designated as slum because there is no purpose in designating it. The inhabitants could not be rehoused now. Unless something is done to halt deterioration, however, we shall be forced to designate these properties as unfit for human habitation. Referring to domestic amenities, the Milner Holland Report says, on page 108, that


more than 1 million households in the London conurbation lack or share basic domestic amenities like water closets and so on.
On taking office we took stock of our inheritance. We discovered great shortages in building materials, both brick and cement, plaster board and other component parts. Industrialised methods of building in London were almost negligible. We found that the pressure on London housing had been made worse in the last 10 years by the rapid growth of office jobs in Central London. Over 150,000 new jobs of this kind have been created. It was known in the mid-1950's that too much office building was being concentrated in London, and that there was a necessity to get those offices moved to other parts of the country. The previous Government waited until 1963 before closing a loophole which developers had found in planning law which enabled them to get 30 to 40 per cent. more office space on redevelopment, but beyond that they were not prepared to go, apart from exhortation.
I ask the House to listen carefully to these figures. We further discovered that office building in London alone in 1964 represented 23 per cent. of the whole of the office building in the whole of Britain and that over 10 per cent. of the total building labour force in Britain was employed in the London region building offices in that area. It is no wonder that we introduced our ban on office building as a matter of emergency. The tragedy is that so much of the existing commitment cannot be caught by the new legislation which we have introduced, and the slowness in waking up to this problem has not only caused grievous troubles in the past but will continue to have its effect in years to come.
From the inception of the Labour Government there has been close liaison between my right hon. Friend the Minister of Housing and Local Government and my right hon. Friend the Minister of Public Building and Works. That is more than we can say took place in the last Government. Whitehall is full of stories of the emnity between the right hon. Member for Leeds, North-East and Mr. Geoffrey Rippon. I gather

that they were like a pair of prima donnas.
After consultation with the industry, my right hon. Friend the Minister of Public Building and Works hopes to see the existing shortage of bricks eased from now on, and is aiming at higher production this year. He has recently had discussion with the cement industry. It will make a supreme effort to meet our demands, but this means imports. I had better put this on record: the Labour Government will have to import cement to meet the demand. We are still in trouble about plaster board at the moment, but this may be eased and the industry has promised that it will do its best to put things right later in the year.
Let the House understand the size and the magnitude of the problem arising from office building and shortages of materials. Let Londoners understand it. Do not let them forget. They must be told. When we are asked what the Government will do and how they will perform, let us be quite clear what was the Government's inheritance—not only the size of the problems but the tasks which they have to overcome.
I want to give a report on my own personal activities since I have had this job. It seemed to me right that I should visit every Greater London borough on the eve of their new life, which we all know starts on 1st April, and discuss with them their own local problems. In the majority I found great enthusiasm and eagerness to get on with the job. In some of the outer London boroughs I felt that they did not regard themselves as part of the Greater London area and they were concerned only with their own internal problems.
Some of the inner London boroughs have problems which are immense. I should like to give two examples. Lambeth and Islington. Here at first hand we see the appalling problems of overcrowding and immigration problems. Boroughs of this kind are crying out for an overspill policy. I discussed with the boroughs in what way the Government could help. They questioned our planning procedures and the long time taken over compulsory purchase orders. I was asked—I say this fairly to the House—what are the future prospects


for finance and when are they going to get cheaper money? They all want this as quickly as possible. They all want some relief following the present subsidy review. All boroughs, Labour and Conservative alike, are asking for a change in the present system of local government finance.
I was struck by the lack of industrialised building in London. Most of the boroughs argued that this was not through lack of good will on their part but through a shortage of any reasonable sites. I got from both Tory and Labour boroughs an expression of deep thanks from my right hon. Friend the Minister of Housing for his Protection from Eviction Act. I did not get any thanks from the Tory boroughs for what the right hon. Gentleman did in the last few years.
The most important impression I gained was that there was a tendency on the part of many of these boroughs to be too parochial and not to see the problem of London as a whole. One of my first tasks is to get a spirit of general co-operation between all the boroughs and the Greater London Council. With this in mind and recognising the shortage of land which is the vital factor, as the right hon. Gentleman said, in the last five months we have tried to bring into reality some of the areas of land which have been discussed before. Without overstatement, I should like to hint at the future of London as I see it.
The Woolwich Arsenal and Erith scheme now becomes a genuine reality. The Greater London Council will be the authority responsible for building and will provide homes for more than 50,000 people. This will be London's new town. I have already told the Greater London Council that I want this to be the greatest effort ever made in London, something which future generations can look back on and say that at any rate this generation did something worth while. This new town will be built with Buchanan principles in mind. The first 1,000 homes will be started early next year.
Here is the key to the future—with the Greater London Council, acting as the authority to deal with overspill in inner London, I can visualise that with close planning there will be a tremendous

break-through south of the river, and boroughs like Lambeth, Southwark, Wandsworth and Paddington, given certain and guaranteed overspill, in their turn can find sites, so that, with a leapfrog arrangement of finding sites for overspill we can smash overcrowding in that part of London.
Turning to the east side of the river, discussions are going on and, I hope, will soon be finalised, about the future development of the Lea Valley. For too long there has been too much talk and we are now looking for action. On the east side of the river, too, again with close planning between the Greater London Council and such boroughs as Tower Hamlets and Newham, the people of the inner London boroughs on that side of the river will be able to get the help for which they have been crying out.
At Croydon Airport we hope to provide homes for 5,000 people and the first start will be made in the autumn. At Hendon the consultants are now drawing up a master plan and I promise to report to the House as soon as I am able. At Kidbrooke we shall be able to rehouse 10,000 people and I have asked for a start to be made at the end of the year.
I want to emphasise that as other Government land becomes available, it will not be automatically auctioned to the highest bidder, as was the previous practice, but that local authorities will get first consideration. We now have the full co-operation of the Minister of Transport in dealing with railway land and I have asked the Greater London Council to negotiate with British Railways to speed up the acquisition of land. I give the assurance that when this land is made available, its use will be discussed with the boroughs. The Greater London Council will act as the agent for clawing back the land from the railways.
A short time ago, I called a conference of all London boroughs to discuss industrialised system building. As I said earlier, my visits to the boroughs had disclosed much uneasiness. At that meeting the London boroughs agreed in principle to form consortia to speed up building wherever possible. A meeting of the architects of all boroughs was held at my request last Thursday to work out details of the consortia and also to work


out how to adopt system building methods. We have made a definite start ready for April and I am being kept informed of the progress being made by the boroughs.
I have tried hard to show what an immense problem we face in Greater London's housing problem—the size and the increase of population and the fact that hardly any effort has been made in the last decade to stop the drift to the South, plus the growth of office building inside London, have all added to the problems facing the Labour Government.
The present rate of house building in Greater London is 26,000 per annum, of which just over half is by local authorities. My right hon. Friend has arranged for this to be stepped up to 35,000 and most of this increase will come from local authority building.
My right hon. Friend is asking all local authorities throughout the country for a four-year housing programme, but the Greater London boroughs will be asked for a seven-year programme. We need a seven-year programme if we are to do the close planning with the Greater London Council which is essential. We shall expect the maximum industrialised building output which is practicable in every one of these programmes. They will be subject to constant review and I shall be in touch with all the boroughs and the Greater London Council to make sure that their agreed programmes are maintained. I make it clear to the House that our aim is a considerable increase in the output of local authority building.
I want the town halls to become human, not just places where we pay the rates and register births and deaths. I want the town halls to show humanity which has been lacking in the past towards those on the waiting list. The hon. Member for Ilford, South (Mr. Cooper) had a right to criticise some of them. I want Members on both sides of the House who represent Greater London to do all that they can to ensure that the public relations side of their town hall is made a priority. I want people to feel that the town halls really care and to understand clearly that we on this side genuinely care.
I said that the Milner Holland Report stressed throughout that insecurity of tenure had been one of the fears which created so much unhappiness. My right hon. Friend the Minister can take credit for his Protection from Eviction Act. He produces his Rent Bill this week. That Bill will show the nation that we are making a genuine effort to get a better relationship between landlord and tenant. He will bring in a Bill later in the Session to deal with leasehold reform. He is already dealing with the question of reform of local government finance. He has already announced overspill arrangements for North Buckingham and the expansion of Peterborough, Ipswich and Northampton.
I end on this note. I speak as one who understands housing. I understand what bad housing can mean because I have lived in it; I know what it is. For 20 years as a Member of Parliament I have been handling individual problems. One cannot speak about housing in the Greater London area without some emotion. My right hon. Friend dealt with some of the myths which have been thoroughly exposed by Milner Holland. We know that immigration, with particular reference to coloured people, has been put in its right perspective and that the vast majority of council tenants are the sort of people who should be council tenants.
We believe that the main responsibility for rehousing those in the greatest need and to provide rented accommodation must be that of the local authorities. It is my task as I see it and the job which I have been given to galvanise the work of the boroughs and to make sure that they all understand that they are part of Greater London. Some of the outer London boroughs have stopped building. They are going to start; I will tell them that. They have got to, because my Minister has certain powers to ensure that they do.
We are not just talking about units of accommodation. We are talking about the right of every family to have a roof over their head. The trouble and tragedy is that most of us knew what Milner Holland has reported; and so did the public. But what has happened in the last 10 years? We have been brought up to believe that it does not matter and


that if we get a council flat we can slam the door on the rest of London and say, "I am all right". If one is buying one's own house, one slams it even harder. I always thought that one of the great virtues of our Christian faith was that we loved our neighbour. But it seems that our attitude is that our neighbour does not matter a damn to us. We have got to bring about a change of mind, because if we do not we cannot face this problem. So help me God, I shall do the best I can.

Mr. R. Gresham Cooke: Before the Minister sits down, he has criticised—

Hon. Members: Sit down.

Mr. Speaker: I think that the hon. Gentleman's opening words were "Before the Minister sits down". Appearances are that he had sat down.

Mr. Brian O'Malley: I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Ordered,

That the Proceedings on the Law Commissions Bill may be entered upon and proceeded with at this day's Sitting at any hour, though opposed.—[Mr. Short.]

LAW COMMISSIONS BILL

As amended (in the Standing Committee), considered.

New Clause.—(COMMENCEMENT.)

This Act shall come into operation on days to be appointed respectively by orders made by the Lord Chancellor in the case of the Law Commission and by the Secretary of State Lord Advocate in the case of the Scottish Law Commission, such orders being subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution by either House of Parliament.—[Sir D. Renton.]

Brought up, and read the First time.

10.1 p.m.

Sir David Renton: I beg to move, That the Clause be read a Second time.
The effect of the new Clause would be to bring the Bill into operation on days to be appointed instead of the day on which the Bill receives the Royal Assent. I Feel bound to protest most strongly

about the Report stage starting at this late hour at this early stage of the Session. I understand that this was arranged through the usual channels and, therefore, my protest is purely personal.
The Government attach importance to the Bill; it is a fairly important Measure, although, I suggest, not an urgent one. That is one of the reasons for the new Clause. It is unfortunate that we should have to discuss a Bill which is designed to improve the reform of the law—and which, therefore, in itself should be an example to all other Bills, if I may put it that way—which is not well conceived and perfectly drafted. The Government's precise intentions, however, are still so vague and the Bill's provisions so imperfect that it still needs a lot of careful attention, which we shall now have to give to it during the midnight hours which lie ahead of us.
However, the new Clause is intended to help the Government, and I hope that the Minister without Portfolio, when he replies, will feel that he is able to express his gratitude for it. It means that the Law Commission for England and Wales will not be set up until a day appointed by the Lord Chancellor and that the Scottish Law Commission will not be set up until a day appointed by the Secretary of State and the Lord Advocate. I apologise for the omission of the word "and" between "Secretary of State" and "Lord Advocate"on the Notice Paper. I accept full responsibility for this. That minor omission does not, however, alter the sense of the new Clause in any way or prevent us from discussing its underlying principles.
The reason for proposing the new Clause is partly financial and partly administrative. The financial implications are these. The Explanatory and Financial Memorandum, which was published with the first print of the Bill dated 20th January, estimates the total expenditure in the first full year at £150,000 for the English and Welsh Commission and £60,000 for the Scottish Commission, a total of £210,000 in all.
Figures of that nature are frequently underestimated and costs are now rising faster than for some years. It might, therefore, be safer to say that the cost of the Bill in the first full year would be, in round figures, £¼ million and rising each year after that. How much it will rise


will depend upon the use that the Government make of the Commission and of the extent to which the Commission uses the opportunities given to it. The cost must, however, rise fairly fast beyond the £¼ million if the Commission is to become the really active body that the Government hope that it will become.
The Government are rightly worried about the enormous cost of Government expenditure and, no doubt, wish to save, whenever there is a chance to do so, on matters of low priority, on administrative luxuries as we might call them. I am sure that the Government are even more anxious to get their priorities right after reading Mr. Rees-Mogg in the Sunday Times yesterday when he said that
The disappointing thing about the Labour Government is that it has been perverse in its priorities (and this from a party which has talked about little else).
The Bill attempts to do even better something that has been done supremely well for many years: statute law revision. As an example of that, all Statutes between the years 1275 and 1770 are now in one volume of the Statutes Revised. So it is a wild exaggeration to talk about a lot of dead wood on the Statute Book. The repealing of obsolete Statutes has gone on with statute law revision, with consolidation of Statutes, codification of case law, law reform generally, in which Lord Butler, Lord Kilmuir, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead (Mr. Brooke) and others excelled. Such work will continue unless held up by lack of Parliamentary draftsmen and the Government's wrong sense of priorities in legislation. In other words, we shall have less time for law reform Bills if a lot of Parliamentary time is taken up by nationalisation Bills. So I say that this Bill, bearing in mind that law reform is already proceeding apace, is a Bill of low priority. It is an administrative luxury. It is, as I think is well known, a brain child of a charming and talented but new Lord Chancellor.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Dr. Horace King): Order. So far the right hon. and learned Member's speech has sounded to me very much like a Second Reading speech. I hope he will come to the new Clause.

Sir D. Renton: I was trying to avoid the former, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. What

I am trying to explain is that if the Bill is a low-priority type of Bill, then instead of its coming into operation immediately it gets the Royal Assent the Government should have the opportunity of considering the cost of the Bill in comparison with the cost of other Government services before bringing the Bill into operation, and before establishing each of the Law Commissions. What I am saying is that the Government might find, after further reflection, and after hearing all the criticism of the Bill in both Houses, that the money it will cost might be better spent on many socially more urgent matters. It would be out of order to mention the kind of other matters which have a higher priority from the point of view of social urgency than this Bill, but of course many examples would spring to the mind of any hon. Member in this House.

The Minister without Portfolio (Sir Eric Fletcher): Give one.

Sir D. Renton: Oh, yes, indeed. I will indeed give one. The hon. Gentleman, going out of order, I think, has challenged me to give one, and I can give him several from my own constituency. I do not know whether he seriously means to press me—

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: If the Minister was out of order in issuing a challenge to the right hon. and learned Member, the right hon. and learned Member is also out of order in accepting it.

Sir D. Renton: I would respectfully agree, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, but on this occasion it was I who, in a sense, ruled the hon. Gentleman out of order before you had done so, and so it was that I accepted the challenge for the time being; but I entirely accept your Ruling.
I do not think I need deploy this case any further. It is a perfectly clear and obvious one. The case can be summarised by saying that this Bill is an administrative luxury which should command only very low priority in Government expenditure; by accepting the new Clause the Government would have an opportunity of putting the cost of the Bill into its right place when they consider priorities of expenditure, whereas if we do not have this new Clause, or something like it, the Government will automatically be committed


to the whole of the cost of the Bill on the day when it receives the Royal Assent.

Sir Knox Cunningham: I wish to support my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton) and to join with him in saying that it would seem a great pity that the Government should decide that the Report stage of this Bill should be considered at this late hour. There may be quite a lot of discussion on a number of Amendments, some of which are Government Amendments.
This appears to be a low priority type of Bill, and I hope, therefore, that the Government will accept the proposed new Clause. That would give them time to get the priorities right. If they leave the Bill as it is, it will come into force as soon as it becomes an Act. I have been pressing the Minister and others to consolidate the Merchant Shipping Acts. I have been told that these are matters which take a great deal of time and are not urgent. That is the sort of thing which the Commissioners could do, and therefore, by the words and action of the Government, this Bill would appear to be a low priority type of Measure. I hope that we may get agreement about this proposed new Clause. We are trying to help the Minister, and I hope that he will be able to accept it.

Sir Eric Fletcher: In the two speeches to which the House has listened we have been told that this is an important Bill and that it is an administrative luxury. Both propositions cannot be right. We consider this an important Bill to which the House gave an unopposed Second Reading. I do not think that it lies in the mouth of the right hon. and learned Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton) to protest at the fact that we are discussing this Clause at this hour. May I remind the right hon. and learned Gentleman that this Clause appeared on the Order Paper in his name during the Committee stage discussions and was withdrawn then at his request because it would not have been convenient for him to have been present in the Committee. Otherwise the Motion would have been moved then. I do not think that it rests with him to protest at this stage when what happened was for his personal convenience.
I am sure that the right hon. and learned Gentleman would be the first to recognise that this is a wrecking Amendment. He attempted to convince the House that it was put down in the most friendly and engaging manner and that he hoped it would be accepted. He must know there is no substance in the suggestion that the Bill should do other than come into operation as early as possible. During the Second Reading debate his right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Sir J. Hobson) paid the Bill a rather lukewarm tribute. He said, in terms, that he did not think the Bill would do any harm and did not think it would do very much good. The House has decided that it wishes the Bill to proceed and we cannot go over the merits of it.
The question is when the Bill should come into operation when it becomes an Act. If it is to do good, obviously the sooner it comes into operation the better, and therefore it should follow the normal course and come into effect as soon as it receives the Royal Assent. The Amendment, even had it been acceptable, would have no merits. Its acceptance would merely mean that after the Bill had obtained the Royal Assent it would be necessary for the Lord Chancellor to lay a Statutory Instrument providing that the Act should thereupon come into operation, and so it would, even though it would be open to either House to move a Prayer to negative it. That is unnecessary, and would be an absurd procedure. It is obviously the wish of both parties that, if we are to have this Law Commission, the sooner it is set up the better.
10.15 p.m.
It is quite idle of the right hon. and learned Member for Huntingdonshire to pretend that there would be some niggardly saving of a few pounds by postponing the operation of the Bill for a few months. I can assure him that it is the intention of the Government that this Bill should have a high priority. We do not regard it as in any sense an administrative luxury. We regard it as a desirable and essential measure of law reform and an essential preliminary to measures of law reform which are long overdue. Therefore I hope that, having listened to the speeches, the House will


resist the new Clause, even if the right hon. and learned Gentleman feels inclined to pursue it.

Question put and negatived.

Clause 1.—(THE LAW COMMISSION.)

Sir John Hobson: I beg to move, in page 1, line 13, at the end, to insert
of whom not less than two shall be persons actively engaged in the administration or practice of the law at the time of their appointment".
I wondered whether it would not be convenient if we were to discuss also Amendment No. 6, to Clause 2, in page 2, line 11, at the end to insert
of whom not less than two shall be persons actively engaged in the administration or practice of the law at the time of their appointment
which is in precisely the same form and affects Scotland. It would be a little odd if the result were different in England from that in Scotland on this point.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Dr. Horace King): Unfortunately, Amendment No. 6 has not been selected by Mr. Speaker.

Sir J. Hobson: I was aware of that, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, but I think that it was said to have been a provisional selection by Mr. Speaker. I was only about to submit to you that it would perhaps be more convenient if precisely the same form of words were considered in relation to Scotland, because Clauses 1 and 2 deal with the two different Commissions. It would be very odd indeed if a limitation of this sort were put on the English Commission without the inclusion of such a limitation in respect of the Scottish Commission. I do not know whether we could perhaps, with your permission, take Amendment No. 6 with this.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: This seems to make sense to me. I do not know the reason that Mr. Speaker did not select Amendment No. 6. It will not be voted on when it is reached, but I would not deprive the right hon. and learned Gentleman of the opportunity of speaking about it.

Sir J. Hobson: I am obliged.
The purpose of this Amendment in relation to England—so far as Scotland is concerned precisely the same arguments apply—is to ensure that the Commission which is to be set up and which is to consist of five members is not wholly composed of persons who, at the time of their appointment, are not engaged in the practice of the law. In other words, it is to see that retired people or academics do not form the whole of the Commission of five. The Minister without Portfolio was good enough in Committee to say that he would consider this matter. I hope that, having considered it, he will see the force of the arguments which have been put and will agree to accept the Amendment.
I acknowledge, of course, that academics and retired judges or retired solicitors or barristers may well have a contribution to make to the Commission in either England or Scotland. They can form very useful members of the Commission, but it would, I think, be disastrous if the Commission were to be composed solely of such persons. I am sure that the Minister without Portfolio will agree with me that it is essential, if the Commissions are to function properly, that they should be kept in very close touch with those who, at the time of their appointment, are currently in touch with the administration of the law. I take it that that phrase includes most of the judiciary, members of the Bar and members of the solicitors' profession in England and advocates, writers to the signet and solicitors in Scotland.
The Commissions ought certainly to consist of a mixture. I should be the last person to suggest that there should be no academics and retired people. I would not suggest that the Commissions should consist solely of members of the judiciary who, when appointed, are concerned with the administration of the law in one form or another, but if we are to secure a mixture, we should have a limitation on the number who can be appointed as academics or retired judges.
If a Commission is at full strength, it will have five members, and it would then be perfectly possible for the academics or retired judges or practitioners to form a majority of the Commission because three of them would be members of the Commission and the only


obligation is to take two of the people specified in the Amendment.
The Amendment merely puts into statutory form what were announced in the Committee to be the intentions of the present Government. The Minister without Portfolio said in Committee that it was the intention of the present Government to appoint at least two persons who are specified in the Amendment—namely, those who, when appointed, are actively engaged in the administration or practise of the law. Therefore, I cannot think that there can be any reason why the Government, having this intention, should not be perfectly willing to accept that this is an honourable and sensible intention which not only the present Government at the present stage but the present Government at a later stage and any other Government in the future ought to have before them and ought to conform with. The only result of putting it into statutory form is not to place an obligation on the Government to do what they have already announced that they intend to do but to ensure that in the future they do it and that future Governments also do it. For these reasons, I hope that the Minister will be able to accept the Amendment.

Mr. Norman St. John-Stevas: While I am very appreciative of the sentiments of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Sir J. Hobson), I must confess that I have some doubt whether the Clause is strictly necessary. It is clear that the Lord Chancellor wants the Commissions to work, and if they are to be effective they must include practising lawyers. The present occupant of the Woolsack is well known for his devotion to the Bar and would, I should have thought, be the last person in the world to exclude the necessary number of practising lawers from the Commissions.
There is the further point that there may well be in the future—we do not know the situations in which it might be desirable—a need to have a preponderance of academic lawyers over practising lawyers. It could happen that the eminence of an academic lawyer in a particular situation in a certain sphere of the law would mean that his presence would he required. The Amendment

would fetter the discretion of the Lord Chancellor unnecessarily. I am not one of those who regard the words "academic lawyer" as a term of abuse. I have been both a practising and an academic lawyer, and, indeed, I served in the chambers of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington as his pupil.
A further objection to the Amendment is the restriction to the appointment of those who are engaged in the administration or practise of the law at the time of their appointment. It may well be that there would be an eminent judge or barrister who had just retired from the Bar whom the Lord Chancellor wished to appoint, and the terms of the Amendment might restrict him from making that appointment.
I hope, therefore, that this Amendment will not be pressed. I feel that here we can trust to the wisdom of the Lord Chancellor whose devotion to the Bar is so well known and whose presence on the Woolsack is, to my mind, a great compensation for the existence of the present Government.

Sir Knox Cunningham: I would never trust to the wisdom of any Lord Chancellor of any party in matters of this sort. It is for the House to see that this is a good Bill. I support my right hon. and learned Friend in the Amendment for these reasons. As I understand it, as the Clause stands at present:
The persons appointed to be commissioners shall be persons appearing to the Lord Chancellor to be suitably qualified by the holding of judicial office or by experience as a barrister or solicitor or as a teacher of law in a university
I had experience as a barrister some five years ago, but having had experience as a barrister or a solicitor may not in the present day and in the present state of the law, and in view of what is required by these Commissioners, be a particularly good qualification. Therefore, I would have thought it was eminently reasonable to have at least two of these Commissioners, which is what the Amendment suggests, who will have been practising right up to the moment of their appointment. I will give them up-to-date experience and it will be a great help to the other Commissioners.
Again, with regard to a teacher of law in a university, I have a great respect for academic lawyers, but I remember in


my experience seeing one of them performing. He was a very eminent lawyer and was engaged in a prize case at the end of the war. He was left alone. He floundered around and in practical matters he was very incompetent. He also wasted a great deal of time. Quite obviously, these Commissioners must be men who know what is going on in the law today because they are going to suggest reforms in it. I think, therefore, that it is absolutely essential that two of the Commissioners at least should have practical experience right up to the time of their appointment.
I understand that together with this Amendment we are able to discuss Amendment No. 6, in page 2, line 11, standing in the names of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Pentlands (Mr. Wylie) and of my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeenshire, West (Mr. Hendry), because it deals with exactly the same point with reference to Scotland. I would be extremely rash if I sought to discuss the law of Scotland, but I hope that we shall have some assistance from the benches opposite and be told about this question in Scotland and Scottish law. Who better to do that than the Secretary of State himself? I hope that he will join in this debate and give us the benefit of his ability and knowledge of Scottish law. I hope that we may have his support on the Amendment which concerns Scotland just as I give my right hon. and learned Friend my support on the Amendment which he moved and which applies to England and Wales.

10.30 p.m.

Sir Eric Fletcher: I cannot help feeling that the case put by the right hon. and learned Member for Warwick and Leamington (Sir J. Hobson) in support of this Amendment was really conclusively demolished by the speech of his former pupil the hon. Member for Chelmsford (Mr. St. John-Stevas). It must have been very gratifying to his former master, the right hon. and learned Gentleman, and it makes it, I feel, very unnecessary for me to say much more.
I would like to repeat the undertaking which I gave in Standing Committee and to which the right hon. and learned Gentleman referred. I repeat the assurance that it is the intention of the present

Government that at least two of the persons to be appointed by them shall be persons actively engaged in the administration or practice of the law at the time of their appointment. I have also, in accordance with the undertaking that I gave in Standing Committee, considered with my right hon. and learned Friend whether there is any merit in an Amendment on these lines. This Amendment is slightly different from the one which we discussed in Committee, when it was suggested not that "not less than two" but that "not less than three" persons should be so actively engaged.
We have come to the conclusion, very largely for the reasons given by the hon. Member for Chelmsford, that any such Amendment is not only unnecessary but would be regrettable. It would fetter the discretion of the present Lord Chancellor and all subsequent Lords Chancellor. At the same time, I think that we all agree, and it would be the wish of any Lord Chancellor, that it would be thoroughly unsatisfactory for the Law Commission to be staffed exclusively either by retired persons or academics or by a combination of the two. Any Lord Chancellor would wish this Law Commission to be broadly based and to contain within its membership of five persons trained from the widest possible sphere of experience, from the point of view of the administration, teaching or practice of the law. It would, therefore, be undesirable to fetter the discretion of the Lord Chancellor by writing such words into the Statute.
Our view is that we should leave the question of appointments to the good sense of the Lord Chancellor for the time being. Apart from that, it seems to me that the Amendment is not aptly drafted. As the hon. Member for Chelmsford pointed out, the reference to
…the administration or practice of the law at the time of their appointment".
would be unduly fettering. It would mean, for example, that if someone retired as a judge or from the Bar one day, then the following day he would be ineligible, whereas if he was appointed on the day before he retired he would be eligible. Although one does not wish to mention names, I am sure that all hon. Members, certainly those with legal experience, can call to mind a number of distinguished barristers who have


ceased to be at the Bar for one reason or another—perhaps to take up work in politics, in administration or public work—and who would be eminently qualified but would no longer be qualified if the Amendment were accepted, because it might not be said at the time of their appointment that they were

…actively engaged in the administration of the law".
I hope, for these reasons, that the hon. and learned Gentleman will not press the Amendment.

Sir D. Renton: I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman has not seen the light over this matter and, if I may say so, I did not think that my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr. St. John-Stevas) did either. Although flexibility is often a good thing, merely to talk about flexibility is not quite enough in the context of the Clause.
We must bear in mind that we want the Commission of five members to be well manned. It will have a High Court judge or somebody higher than that as its chairman. Of the four remaining members, I suggest that there is too much flexibility at present. It may be difficult to get barristers or solicitors of the type it would be valuable to have—persons with recent practical experience—and it might be easy to get somebody on the way out. That is why we placed at the end of the Amendment the words
…at the time of their appointment".
It will be seen, therefore, that there is some sense in that.
I do not think that we will feel that the public is necessarily being well served by somebody getting this extremely agreeable public appointment in order to ease his declining years. I am sure that the Government view on this is that we want people with experience of the law and with a future in the law; people in the prime of life who will give several of the best years of their lives to the work of the Commission.
Obviously such people will be rather difficult to get. Will it not be very tempting for a Lord Chancellor, knowing that he must somehow fill these appointments, in default of getting the right type of barrister or solicitor, or two barristers or two solicitors, to get out of the difficulty in one or other of two ways? These are either by appointing three or four academic lawyers instead of only two academic lawyers, or by getting members of the legal profession who are on the way out? This is a serious point and one which deserves a much more sympathetic understanding than it has been given this evening.
I thought that the Minister without Portfolio was very sympathetic and sensible when he dealt with this matter in Standing Committee, and we had hoped

that this Amendment exactly interpreted the views which he then expressed. The hon. Gentleman has already referred to what he said in col. 19 of the Standing Committee's Report at the conclusion of the discussion. I will not repeat that, but I would remind him of what he also said in col. 17:
It might well be desirable that three members of the Commission should be two solicitors and one teacher of law, or one solicitor and two teachers of law…
but he then went on to say something which is now irrelevant. I agree that at the time he said it I was shocked that my Amendment in Committee had that result. The hon. Gentleman said:
It might well be desirable that three members of the Commission should be two solicitors and one teacher of law, or one solicitor and two teachers of law, but it does not seem to me to be reasonable to ensure that at all times three of the five should consist either of judges or barristers, which would be the result of the Amendment"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee A, 2nd March, 1965; c. 17.]
That does not arise tonight, but neither does any conflict between the merits of academic and practising lawyers arise tonight. That is not the point. The point is that we want to ensure that this is a well-balanced Commission from the point of view of the type of legal experience that can be brought into its counsels. For the reasons which I have given, although it may be very difficult for the hon. Gentleman to give a reply tonight altering the reply which he has already given, I ask him to invite the attention of the Lord Chancellor to the arguments which my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Sir J. Hobson) and I have put forward.
It would be an awful pity if, the Government having gone to the trouble of establishing this Commission, we found that through there being too much flexibility—and it is as easy to have too much as too little—a Lord Chancellor some time in the future, not necessarily at once, were to use the soft option of getting hold of academic lawyers instead of barristers or solicitors who are still in the prime of life with experience to contribute and a legal career still ahead of-them. I hope that the hon. Gentleman thinks about this seriously.

Mr. Geoffrey Howe: I should like to add my support to what my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton) has just said, not in any tendentious spirit, but merely to emphasise to the Minister without Portfolio that among members of the profession, particularly the young members, there is or could well be genuine concern if there were any uncertainty about the nature of the Government's intention in this respect. I believe that it is important that at least two members of the Commission should have had recent, almost immediate, experience, preferably in both branches—one from each—of the practice of the law. It is very easy to underrate the extent to which a retired practitioner can get out of touch with the feeling within his profession.
I hesitate to say this about my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr. St. John-Stevas), but perhaps he will forgive me if I observe that he has moved into such stratospheric realms since his practice at the Bar that his energies have become increasingly directed to the academic side. Although I have no doubt that he, for example, would have a great deal to contribute to the deliberations of the Commission, he would not necessarily command the immediate enthusiasm of those of his colleagues in the profession who have soldiered on in the trenches of the Bar. Without giving examples, one can call to mind other people who have quite recently left the upper reaches of both professions and who quickly begin to move into a different category and turn into a different kind of animal.
I earnestly put this point to the Minister. What is important is recent experience in the practice of the profession, giving both continued qualification with the necessary "know-how" and qualities which would carry the confidence of those who remain in practice.
If the Law Commission presents this kind of picture, bringing people in their prime of life into active work on it, the Commission could begin to fulfil another useful rôle, that is, building bridges between the world of academic lawyers and the world of practising lawyers. There is still a wide gulf fixed between these two, and it would not be impossible for the Commission to become a kind of

transit camp, of the more respectable sort, through which academic lawyers might come to practise and through which practising lawyers might move on to academic appointments. There is much more contact between these branches of the law in the United States, for example, than there is in this country, and that object would be much more likely to be achieved by the appointment of practitioners of both kinds while still in their prime of life at the time of their appointment.

Mr. Percy Grieve: I support the Amendment and endorse entirely what has been said by my hon. Friend the Member for Bebington (Mr. Howe). Those who are in practice in the legal profession now and who remain in practice will have a very special function to perform on the Commission. They will bring to the Commission the knowledge of their friends in practice of the lacunae in the law and the room in ticular branches for reform.
It seems to me, therefore, that they will have a special function to perform on the Commission, and it is asking little of the Minister to accept that at least two members of the Commission should be pracising members of the legal profession and that the Bill should so provide.

Sir Eric Fletcher: I appreciate the spirit in which the speeches have been made by hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite. There is really nothing between us on both sides of the House. We are all anxious that these Commissions should be well balanced. The only real problem is whether this qualification should be written into the Bill or whether the appointments to produce the balance should be left to the good sense and discretion of the Lord Chancellor and his successors. Speaking for my noble Friend, I have already indicated what his intention is, and I am quite sure that equally it would be the intention of any future holder of his office to see that the appointments were such as to constitute a well balanced Commission comprising at least two persons with, as the hon. Member for Bebington (Mr. Howe) said, recent experience.
10.45 p.m.
Recent experience, of course, is slightly different from active engagement in the


administration or practice of the law at the time of their appointment. It seems to me, therefore, that to insist upon these words in the Bill would be an irritating and unnecessary interference with that desirable measure of flexibility which I am sure any holder of the office of Lord Chancellor would exercise in the spirit in which we are all anxious that these two Law Commissions should be constituted. Whereas I need hardly give an assurance that my noble Friend will read everything said in this House, I hope that right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite will not press the Amendment.

Sir Knox Cunningham: On a point of order. I understand that we are discussing Amendment No. 6 together with other Amendments. When I asked whether there would be a reply from a Scottish Minister, the Secretary of State nodded. Would it be in order for him to give some reply?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: It would be in order for any right hon. or hon. Gentleman to catch the eye of the Speaker or Deputy-Speaker, but one of the most ancient gambits in the House is to lament that a Minister does not take part in the debate. It is an ancient gambit, but it has always been out of order.

Amendment negatived.

Sir J. Hobson: I beg to move Amendment No. 2, in page 1, line 18, to leave out subsection (4).

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: It would be for the convenience of the House to take at the same time Amendment No. 3:
In page 1, line 21, at the end to insert:
for a period not exceeding four years from the date of his appointment as such member".

Sir J. Hobson: These two Amendments have been put down in order to investigate and to consider a little more deeply the constitutional position of the new body which we are setting up by the Bill and the implications of allowing within the body a member of the judiciary who, under the Bill, can retain his position if he is a higher judicial officer and at the same time be a member of the Commission. Is it right either that he should do so—which is a point raised by Amendment No. 2—or that he should do so for more than four years, which is the question raised by Amendment No. 3?
From a consideration of the Bill, it is a little difficult to see exactly what will be the constitutional position of the Law Commissioners when they have been appointed. Are they servants of the Crown? One would think that they almost certainly were. They are paid out of public funds. They are appointed by the Lord Chancellor. When one looks at their functions it is quite plain that they are, as I described them on Second Reading, a spare wheel in the machinery of Government. The justification of the Bill is that they are a necessary spare wheel which will carry a great deal of weight and will assist the Government, upon whom it is acknowledged still rests the primary responsibility for all law reform.
It must be agreed that the executive, the Ministers of the Crown, remain primarily responsible for the forwarding of the processes of law reform, whether it be general law reform or the more narrow field of the reform of lawyers' law. It is obvious that the Lord Chancellor, to whichever party he may belong and whoever he may be, will carry the primary responsibility for seeing that the processes of getting the law up-to-date, of reforming the processes of the law, and of making lawyers' law better. This is a responsibility which will primarily and always rest on the Government as a whole and on the Lord Chancellor, in particular, as a member of the Government. It is plain that the design of these Law Commissioners is to assist that process in England and in Scotland to assist the Secretary of State and the Lord Advocate in the same process as it is followed in Scotland.
This becomes plain when one looks at Clause 3. Under that Clause, the Law Commissioners will have the specific duty to consider any proposal for law reform which may be referred to them by anybody; and in particular, by any Government Department, by the Lord Chancellor and by any members of the Government who require advice or help. They will be under the duty also to consider—and I emphasise to consider as opposed merely to receiving—any proposals from any hon. Member of this House, from members of any political party, or, I suppose, from any crackpot who feels like writing to them.
On top of all this, they will have to prepare programmes for the Lord Chancellor and the Secretary of State for Scotland, if either of those persons approve, and consider any proposal referred to them by the Lord Chancellor on particular branches of the law and formulation of proposals for reform. All this will be an additional part of the cog under which law reform and improvements to the law are produced. They will have responsibility for providing assistance to Government Departments, whatever that may mean; and one supposes that they will be attached to the Departments. They will be under a duty to give that assistance if requested by any Government Department.
It would seem that the whole usefulness and purpose of the Law Commission is to come from considerable support to the Government which may happen to be in office, and the success of the Commission in England and Scotland will depend very greatly upon the closeness of the Lord Chancellor and the Secretary or State for Scotland with the Commissioners as they may exist.
The significant point is that this places them, while their functions remain so indeterminate as they are under the Bill, within the purview of the Executive. For any part of the machinery of government, it places them in the closest possible contact with Ministers of the Crown in both Houses of Parliament. One could foresee questions being frequently asked of the Lord Chancellor, or the Secretary of State, as to whether certain proposals have been referred to the Commission; whether a report has been received on this subject or that, while questions can be asked by hon. Members of this House and another place. There can be political correspondents outside asking about the state of the law and the work of the Commissioners.
All this raises the question of whether it is right, in these circumstances, that a member of the judiciary who has always remained separate from and independent of the Executive should be placed in the position of having transferred himself into the executive field of action while, at the same time, retaining his status as a Lord of Appeal or a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary. This is something which has not been properly

thought out, and, while I see that it is a good idea for there to be legal qualifications, I question whether it is right when they are members of the Commission for them to be in such close proximity to Ministers of the Crown and the Executive that they should remain at that same time with their full office of a judge, with all its privileges and immunities. They can, and presumably will, on appointment maintain their irremovability from judicial office. They could be dismissed as Law Commissioners but could not, except by petition of both Houses of Parliament, be removed from judicial office. They would presumably continue to draw salary and pension for a job they were not doing. We do not know what salary and pension the other members of the Commission may be given, but they may be very different from the salary and pension and the position and status of a High Court judge.
It would be undesirable that one of the members of the Commission should be put on a completely different basis from his colleagues on the Commission. I believe that the position is different as between England and Scotland, but an English judge receives a writ of summons to advise the House of Lords, attends the opening of Parliament, and could be in a position in which he was summoned to advise the House of Lords, as one of Her Majesty's judges, as to the law on a topic of which he was considering the reform of that law in his capacity as a Law Commissioner.
It is a little odd that we are to muddle up completely the position of the judiciary, which should be entirely independent of the Executive and the Legislature, and the position of a person who is retaining the constitutional status, the pay and the privileges of a High Court judge, at the same time as he is a member of the Law Commission. Surely it places such an individual in a rather invidious situation, because the individual judge who may decide, while retaining his office as a judge, to become a Law Commissioner would be in a position in which, if he envisaged that he would return to his judicial office at a future date, he would be at the mercy, in his future career as a judge, of either the existing Lord Chancellor or a prospective Lord Chancellor.

Sir Eric Fletcher: So he is at present.

Sir J. Hobson: But he is only subject to the views of the existing Lord Chancellor or a future or prospective Lord Chancellor in respect of the discharge of his judicial duties. His prospects of judicial promotion, however, might be prejudiced, not by the performance of his judicial duties, but by the performance of duties which are largely executive, duties which may bring him into considerable political controversy on some topic of law reform that is referred to the Commission by a Minister.
Supposing racial discrimination or trade disputes are referred to the Law Commission and it makes a report. It might very well be that the chairman of the Commission was a person who had retained his status as a High Court judge and who expected to return to it but who, not by any performance of his judicial functions but by a performance of extra-judicial functions, would place himself in a position of embarrassment in relation to the existing or a future Lord Chancellor.
All I am saying is that the Law Commission does not seem to have or to fit in very plainly at the moment with any exact constitutional position. It does seem, in so far as it fits into the constitutional scheme at all, to be very closely linked indeed to the Executive. It is quite wrong to place a person who holds judicial office in a position in which he continues to hold that judicial office while he becomes, as it were, part of the Executive.

Mr. Leo Abse: The right hon. and learned Gentleman is making an interesting point, and I am sure we are all following it. Did he find any difficulty when he was Attorney-General? Was not that a similar position? Was there conflict between his political and judicial rôles? Was there such agony in that position that he feels that it would be possible that someone else may be placed in a difficult position?

Sir J. Hobson: The Attorney-General does not hold a judicial position but is adviser to the Government. He is a member of the Government. The hon. Gentleman's analogy is not correct. The office of Attorney-General is temporary. It is not pensionable and the occupant

is not there for 15 years. His prospects of promotion do not depend upon the discharge of judicial office. It is absurd to draw an analogy between a High Court judge or Lord Justice of Appeal, acting as one of the Law Commissioners, and the Attorney-General. Their circumstances are completely different.
11.0 p.m.
Therefore, I submit that we should consider very carefully within the framework of the situation the position of the Law Commissioners. I have always thought that this work should be done by an expansion of the Lord Chancellor's Department, and to the extent to which Law Commissioners are an extension of the Lord Chancellor's Department or the Scottish Office and the Lord Advocates Department the more successful they will be. It is obvious that there must be very close co-operation between the Government of the day and the Law Commissions. I would rather see this done by an expansion of the Lord Chancellor's Department. That not being so we shall have a situation in which the success of the Law Commissioners depends on the closeness of their association with the Government of the day. If that is right—and I am sure it is as a practical position—then it is very embarrassing to place a member of the judiciary who retains his judicial office in that position. It may lead to considerable difficulties in the situation of an individual who is placed in that dual capacity.
There is a second objection to subsection (4) which would be better left out entirely. We should leave it so that if anybody wants to be appointed to the Law Commission he can resign his judicial office and perhaps, at a later stage, be reappointed. The Clause, as drafted, is a little odd. What would be the position of the holder of high judicial office if he were made a part-time Commissioner? He need not be required to perform his judicial duties but, presumably, he could volunteer to do them. There is nothing to preclude that, but it is, is it not, a rather odd situation to have a member of the judiciary who only volunteers to do his work? He would be in a position in which he could say to the Lord Chief Justice that he was sorry but the Law Commission stopped him from going out on circuit, or going


on an inconvenient or long case, or going to the Old Bailey because he did not like trying crime.
It would not be a satisfactory position to have a member of the higher judiciary who only performed as such when he volunteered to do so. Of course, if it is envisaged that the holders of high judicial office are only to be appointed as full-time members of the Commission, then that point does not arise. I would have thought that there was considerable scope—if we are to have any part-time member of that Commission at all—for having members of that judiciary part-time and leaving them with their full obligations as High Court judges and not placing them, unlike their brethren, in the position of being volunteers in the discharge of those duties.
The other difficulty about subsection (4) is that it appears, by implication, to affect the position of those who hold judicial office which is not high judicial office; for example, in England there are county court judges, stipendiary magistrates, members of the Bar who are recorders or chairmen of quarter sessions, and in Scotland we have sheriff principals and sheriff substitutes. By implication, if a holder of a high judicial office may be appointed without relinquishing that office, a holder of a judicial office which is not a high office must presumably relinquish that office.

Sir Eric Fletcher: indicated assent.

Sir J. Hobson: I see that the Minister nods his head. Is that quite right?
It would disqualify appointing any of these persons as part-time members, but if we are to have no part-time members the point would not arise. Is it right, however, that we should not have any county court judges as part-time members of the Commission? Is it right, above all, that members of the Commission who are, or have been, members of the Bar or solicitors holding judicial appointments, such as recorders or chairmen of quarter sessions, should not continue to preside over those courts? I do not know about the position in Scotland, but I should have thought it perfectly possible for a sheriff principal to be a part-time member of the Law Commission in Scotland and to have retained his position as a sheriff principal.

The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. William Ross): I am fascinated by the right hon. and learned Gentleman's arguments and how he has managed to bring Scotland into Clause 1. If he had felt so kindly and generously about the position of Scotland, why did not he put down the same Amendment concerning Scotland? Every time the right hon. and learned Gentleman mentions Scotland, he is out of order.

Sir J. Hobson: No doubt, if my point is good for England, the Scots will see how excellent it is and the Bill can be amended in the Lords. I am giving these examples because the Bill will affect both England and Scotland and the principle applies equally to both countries. If Amendment No. 4 is passed for England, it should cause the Government to consider the position concerning Scotland.
I will certainly confine myself to England. I only ask whether it is intended that members of the Bar or solicitors who are chairmen of quarter sessions or recorders must, on being appointed to the Commission, give up those judicial offices. That appears to me to be the effect of subsection (4). I should have thought that that was quite wrong and that it was very desirable that in subsection (4) we should have the opportunity of having both part-time county court judges, part-time members of the Bar who hold judicial office and part-time solicitors who hold judicial office at quarter sessions or elsewhere.
Those are my main points on Amendment No. 2 about why we think that subsection (4) of the Clause should be omitted, but there is the alternative view that while all these arguments against placing persons holding judicial office in this embarrassing position may not wholly preclude their holding the double position, if that is to happen—although we think it is wrong that it should—we say that any person ought not to lead a double life for longer than a limited period, that it is not right for a member of the judiciary to hang on to his high judicial office while he is performing over long periods of years, the functions of a Law Commissioner, and that it is not right that he should retain an office the duties of which he does not perform for more than a period of four years.
It is a bad constitutional mixture in any event to get the judiciary mixed up with the Executive in the way that we are doing, and we should certainly not impose such a mixture on any individual for too long. Three years is plenty. Five years would be one-third of the total pensionable judicial life of a member of the High Court. That certainly would be too long, because it would mean that for more than one-third of his usual period before he gets a pension, a judge would not be performing the functions of a judge.
Therefore, while five years is much too long and we think that three years is ample, we have selected four years because that gives a little more flexibility than the three years. We think that three years is enough, but there may be the odd, exceptional case in which three years would not be quite enough. We therefore think that four years is the absolute maximum period for which any judge holding high judicial office should both retain that office, not performing its duties but drawing its salaries and emoluments, and do other work.

Mr. Grieve: I should like to support my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Sir J. Hobson), particularly upon Amendment No. 2, and to ask the Minister seriously to consider whether subsection (4) should not be dropped altogether from the Bill. I put my objection to it on the solid constitutional ground that, in my view, it does make considerable inroads into our ancient constitutional principle that the judiciary should be independent. I fully recognise the reasons which have motivated the Minister to suggest that those holding high judicial office should be eligible for service as Commissioners. Quite obviously, there would be very great advantages in having their experience and their knowledge of the law at the service of the Commission.
Nevertheless, if one considers the functions of the Commission, and particularly the functions which are set out in Clause 3 (1, b and e), it seems clear that to appoint holders of high judicial office to the Commission would be both a derogation from their dignity as judges and a breach of their historic independence.
Clause 3 (1, b) provides that one of the functions of the Commission shall be
to prepare and submit to the Minister from time to time programmes for the examination of different branches of the law with a view to reform, including recommendations as to the agency (whether the Commission or another body) by which any such examination should be carried out".
In other words, the judges are to be taken off the Bench, taken into the corridors of the Ministry, and even put in the position of importuning reforms from the Minister. I put, necessarily in rather derogatory and forceful language, what would seem to have to be done, because to understand what is being done, in my submission one has to take the lowest common denominator, to see the position in which holders of high judicial office will be placed by fulfilling that particular function imposed upon them by that paragraph (b).
Then, turning to Clause 3 (1, e), we see a further function is
to provide assistance to government departments and, at the request of the Minister, to other authorities or bodies concerned with proposals for the reform or amendment of any branch of the law".
In other words, here there is no derogation from their dignity, but they are to be put in the corridors of the Ministry, helping the Minister out with Governmental functions. This is a complete negation of the doctrine of the separation of powers, or the separation of functions, and to my mind constitutes a very grave inroad into the traditional independence of the judiciary.
For these reasons, I support my right hon. and learned Friend and ask the Minister seriously to consider whether subsection (4) should not be dropped from the Bill.

Sir Eric Fletcher: We have listened to the very interesting speech from the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Sir J. Hobson), which covered a great deal of ground. I hope he will not think me discourteous if I attempt to deal only with those parts of his speech which appeared to me to be strictly relevant to the Amendment he was proposing.
The effect of his Amendment to leave out subsection (4) would be to make it impossible for my noble Friend the Lord Chancellor to appoint High Court judges


or holders of high judicial office as Commissioners. What the right hon. and learned Gentleman failed to point out during the whole of his speech was whether he thought that would be a good thing or a bad thing. Hitherto, I had gathered from all the speeches of hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite, both on Second Reading and in Committee, that it was thought that it would be desirable that we should if we could obtain the services of a High Court judge as chairman of the Commission. The right hon. and learned Gentleman failed to indicate whether that was still his view. It is clearly the desire of the Lord Chancellor that we should try to recruit a High Court judge to preside over the Commission. I gather that the right hon. and learned Gentleman does not dissent from that view.

11.15 p.m.

Sir J. Hobson: rose—

Sir E. Fletcher: Does he dissent?

Sir J. Hobson: I thought I had made that plain; if I did not, I am sorry. I absolutely accede to the proposition that a High Court judge—or someone who had been a High Court judge—would be exactly the sort of person who should preside over this Commission. However, I think it is highly undesirable that, while he was presiding over the Commission, he should retain his status as a judge. The only question is whether he retains his dual status while he is presiding, or whether a person who used to be a High Court judge and gives it up would be reappointed to the judiciary if he wanted to go back.

Sir E. Fletcher: The right hon. and learned Gentleman cannot have it both ways. On the last Amendment, he said that he hoped that the Lord Chancellor would not appoint people who were on the way out, and, therefore, that he would not appoint a retired High Court judge. The opposite to appointing a retired High Court judge is appointing someone who is still a High Court judge, still in the vigour of life, and who can be seconded from his judicial functions for a period of years. Therefore, in this part of the Bill, we are doing exactly what the right hon. and learned Gentleman was asking us to do when he moved his earlier

Amendment. We think that, if a High Court judge can be persuaded to leave the Bench for a period of years in order to preside over the work of the Commission, it would be a very good thing, for the judge, for the Bench and for the work of the Commission. On these grounds, we resist the Amendment.
I was interested in what the right hon. and learned Gentleman said about the constitutional position, and I agree that it is important to deal with that. But it is not right for the right hon. and learned Gentleman to suggest, as he did, that in seconding a High Court judge for work of this kind we are creating any kind of precedent, or, indeed, doing anything which could possibly create any embarrassment to the judge in question or lead to any violation of the constitutional doctrine about the independence of the Executive and the judiciary, to which, on both sides of the House, we attach importance. In so far as precedents are concerned, it is clearly necessary for me to remind the right hon. and learned Gentleman that there are plenty of precedents—certainly within recent years—of members of the judiciary having been seconded for important extra-judicial work, in the course of which, sometimes, the performance of those duties has produced unfortunate consequences.
There was a case, during the Tory régime, in which a very distinguished judge was asked to make an important report of a judicial character about conditions in Central Africa, which was then, unfortunately, disregarded by the Tory Government, and regarded as a political report and not a judicial report, with very unfortunate consequences for the distinguished judge and, I should have thought, for any other member of the Bench who was invited to undertake duties of that kind. On the work of the Law Reform Committee, to which both the right hon. and learned Gentleman and I have paid tribute, and in which a number of judges have done invaluable work in recent years, it has been one of the criticisms of the limited amount of work which that Committee has been able to undertake that judges in the full vigour of their active judicial engagements were unable to devote more than a fraction of their time to its work.
It is for that reason that we think it desirable that, for a spell of years, a member of the higher judiciary should undertake the presidency of this Commission. We think it right that during that time he should retain his status and immunities as a High Court judge, because it is our intention, after a spell of years on this Commission, he should then return, no doubt even better equipped, to the Bench. That situation cannot be brought about unless we have sub-paragraph (4) in the Clause. If another precedent were required for the seconding of a senior member of the judiciary to a purely executive function—which this is not—we would recall, and here I am relying on my memory, that Lord Reading, when Lord Chief Justice, was appointed His Majesty's Ambassador in Washington. [Interruption.] The right hon. and learned Gentleman corrects me?

Sir J. Hobson: He had been Lord Chief Justice and was appointed Ambassador, but he did not hold the two offices at the same time.

Sir E. Fletcher: I agree. But what happened after he was appointed Ambassador in Washington? He came back to the Bench.

Sir J. Hobson: No.

Sir E. Fletcher: I think so. I think that the right hon. and learned Gentleman will find that he was seconded from the Bench for a time as Lord Chief Justice, undertook the appointment as Ambassador in Washington and then returned to the Bench. At any rate, he returned to judicial work.

Sir J. Hobson: Was not the position that, having been Lord Chief Justice, he was entitled to sit in the House of Lords in his judicial capacity, and only for that reason sat in the House of Lords, but did not retain his judicial office as Lord Chief Justice and did not sit again as Lord Chief Justice?

Sir E. Fletcher: Be that as it may, it shows that there is no inconsistency in a member of the higher judiciary leaving the Bench and undertaking a purely executive and political post for a time and then returning to fulfil judicial functions. That is a precedent which goes further than we are suggesting here.
The members of this Commission will not be undertaking executive functions. They will be undertaking advisory functions, advisory to the Lord Chancellor. I do not think that the right hon. and learned Gentleman can seriously suggest that there is any violation of any constitutional principle in our proposition that a member of the High Court Bench should be appointed for a term of years to be a member of this Commission.
Amendment No. 3 is inconsistent with Amendment No. 2. It suggests that if a High Court judge is to be seconded for the work of the Law Commission it should be for a limited period. It is implicit in our proposal that a High Court judge who is appointed to the Commission should retain his functions as a judge and that he should eventually contemplate returning to the Bench. Otherwise those provisions would be unnecessary. At the same time, it seems to us unnecessarily restrictive to place a period of years on his appointment. It might well be that at the end of four years the judge in question was engaged on some work nearing completion which it would be very desirable that he should stay to finish. It seems to us, therefore, very much better that we should not in this matter interfere with the discretion of the Lord Chancellor for the time being as to the period of time during which anybody in this position should be seconded from the Bench to the Commission. We believe that this method of cross-fertilisation between the Bench and the Commission would be of mutual advantage. I hope that I have said sufficient to persuade the right hon. and learned Gentleman not to press the Amendment.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: I support the very important constitutional argument put forward by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Sir J. Hobson). It is highly undesirable for this blurring of the distinction between the judiciary and the Executive to be imported into our Constitution. The line is blurred, it is true, at other places, blurred in particular on the Woolsack, I suppose, where we get an anomalous position; but the existence of one anomaly is not a reason for introducing further anomalies.
The precedents produced by the Minister without Portfolio, apart from what


did or did not happen to Lord Reading, are singularly inappropriate, since the appointments in those cases—he referred to the appointment of Lord Devlin, for example—were of a very strictly temporary character, whereas the appointments to the Commission, while not being of a permanent character, would be more than of a strictly temporary character to serve for a period of months and would fall into the category of semi-permanent. There a real danger that if controversial matter entered into the deliberation of the Law Commissions, the independence of the judiciary or the judge involved might well be compromised.
The second objection is this extraordinary provision that the person, the high judicial officer, appointed to the Commission should retain all the privileges of his position without the duties. That seems most extraordinary because, after all, the privileges exist for one purpose only, to enable the holder of the judicial office to discharge his duties more adequately. That seems to me to be another objection to this Clause, and I do not see any inconsistency in the argument put forward by my right hon. and learned Friend in wanting those who have held judicial office recently to serve on the Commission. His objection centres on these words that they may be "appointed as a Commissioner without relinquishing that office".
I hope that these arguments, which reinforce those of my right hon. and learned Friend, will prevail upon the Minister without Portfolio to give this matter second thoughts.

Sir Knox Cunningham: I want to speak on Amendment No. 2 which seeks to delete subsection (4), which says:
A person who holds high judicial office may be appointed as a Commissioner without relinquishing that office, but shall not be required to perform his duties as the holder of that office while he remains a member of the Commission.
That is a thoroughly bad Clause and one which should be deleted. I think the Minister without Portfolio has missed the point. What it says there is that a holder of high judicial office, a Lord Justice of Appeal or a Judge of the High Court, shall be in suspended animation, be put in deep freeze for a certain period. He will, during the period of suspended

animation, and I come to Clause 3(1)(e). be required:
to provide assistance to government departments and, at the request of the Minister, to other authorities or bodies concerned with proposals for the reform or amendment of any branch of the law;".
At the request of the Minister he may be asked to provide assistance to other bodies concerned.
We have not heard what these other bodies will be, or what type of assistance he will be required to give, but it seems to me that this is very much a breach in the constitutional position whereby a person who is appointed to high judicial office—and this has been so over a great number of years—is entirely independent. He is on the Consolidated Fund, he cannot be removed except by Motion of both Houses. Now he is still to hold that office but is to be given other duties to perform at the request of a Minister of the Crown. There could be no more mixing of his duties than that he should be receiving orders from the Executive while still holding his position of independence. I would have thought this to be a most disastrous innovation, and I would certainly think that the Minister without Portfolio should think again.
Even if he will not think again tonight, I think the Government should think again and take out this subsection when the Bill goes to another place. I strongly support my right hon. and learned Friend on Amendment No. 2.

11.30 p.m.

Sir E. Fletcher: In reply to the hon. and learned Member for Antrim, South (Sir Knox Cunningham), I rather agree that it would be an inconsistency for a High Court judge to act as such while he was a member of the Commission. This raises the point mentioned by his right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Sir J. Hobson), who asked whether it was ever contemplated that a High Court judge should serve in a part-time capacity. It would certainly not be the intention of the present Government, and I would have thought that there would be a constitutional inconsistency in a High Court judge serving as a part-time member of the Commission; and being at the same time a member of the Commission and also functioning as a judge.
I ask the hon. Member for Chelmsford (Mr. St. John-Stevas), following his observations, to realise that the Government think it highly desirable that, if possible, a High Court judge should be persuaded to accept the chairmanship of this Commission. We consider that it would be difficult to persuade anybody in the position of a High Court judge to accept such an appointment other than for a limited time. It is, therefore, a matter of practical necessity as well as commonsense that a person seconded for a short period to the Commission should retain his status of a High Court judge so that after having served on the Commission he could revert to the constitutional position of irremovability and so on and the position he had relinquished for the time being.

Sir J. Hobson: With the leave of the House, I merely wish to point out to the Minister, with respect, that he has given the game away. He first of all says that it is constitutionally wrong for a judge to sit part-time as a Law Commissioner. I should have thought, a fortiori, that it would be wrong for him to sit full-time and then return to his office. The Minister says that it is necessary for him to retain his office so that he may return to it. Surely the Government only need to make some provision—not in this Statute but in the one concerning the pensions of judges—whereby if a judge gives up his judicial office to become a member, permanent or part-time, of the Law Commission, on returning to his previous office his previous service would be aggregated with his subsequent service for his pension. It would, therefore, be possible to deal with this matter by way of pension because a judge's salary would have been provided for. The Government would not then have to go to all the trouble of the Bill.
I am bound to say that I think it constitutionally wrong that, whether part-time or full-time, a person in a judicial position should work for the Law Commission yet not be performing his judicial functions and yet should have the status, rights, privileges, pension and all the rest of his office as a High Court judge.
It is secondment to which my hon. Friends and I object. It should not be

secondment. He should, when no longer functioning as a High Court judge, cease to be one—and provision must then be made to deal with the position, when it arises, of his return to office.

Amendment negatived.

Clause 2.—(THE SCOTTISH LAW COMMISSION.)

Mr. N. R. Wylie: I beg to move Amendment No. 4, in page 2, line 5, to leave out "the Secretary of State and".

Mr. Speaker: It would, I think, be convenient for the House to discuss at the same time the following Amendment, which is really consequential, in line 8, leave out "the Secretary of State and".

Mr. Wylie: That will be satisfactory.
This is the second attempt which is being made to correct a feature of the Bill which is a thoroughly bad feature, which I assure hon. Gentlemen opposite has caused resentment among the legal profession in Scotland and which has never, to my way of thinking, been properly justified by anything said either by the Secretary of State on Second Reading or by the Joint Under-Secretary in Committee.
The Joint Under-Secretary undertook in Committee to have another look at this, and I hope that now he will accept the Amendment. I make no apology for repeating what I said in Committee—that the provision whereby the responsibility for making appointments to the Law Commission in Scotland is the joint responsibility of the Secretary of State and the Lord Advocate bears all the symptoms of a wholly unsatisfactory compromise. It is unnecessary because in the Government we already have, and must necessarily have, a Minister who is properly qualified to make appointments to a body of this nature. It is undesirable because it invites the possibility, to put it no higher, of a disagreement between two Scottish Ministers.
I agree wholeheartedly with what was said in Committee by the right hon. Member for Clackmannan and East Stirlingshire (Mr. Woodburn) when he described this dual responsibility as thoroughly illogical. I am sorry that the right hon. Gentleman is not here tonight. Who are the persons in respect


of whom this power of selection falls to be exercised? The criteria to be applied by whoever makes the appointment are to be found in Clause 2(2):
…persons appearing to the Secretary of State and the Lord Advocate to be suitably qualified by the holding of judicial office or by experience as an advocate or solicitor or as a teacher of law…
On the face of it, the Secretary of State as a Minister is wholly unqualified to make a selection on the basis of that criteria, and on the face of it the Lord Advocate is wholly qualified to do so. Accordingly one must look with care for the reasons adduced in the course of discussions on this provision to find a justification.
On Second Reading, the Secretary of State described himself as a Minister of Education, Minister of Agriculture, Minister of Health and a Home Secretary, but on that line of reasoning it could equally well be argued that the Lord Chancellor should share his responsibility with those corresponding English Ministers, or at least with the Home Secretary. One is tempted to ask why Scotland has to be treated differently in this way and be deprived of the considered selection of the one Scottish Minister who is properly qualified to make a selection of this nature.
The Secretary of State went on to say that there were ample precedents for this and he quoted the Tribunals and Inquiries Act, 1958, but, as he must know, that is not a proper comparison. The tribunals with which that Statute was concerned was not confined to any particular set of qualifications. It was a mixed bag, so to speak, and the selection of the panel of chairmen, for whom legal qualifications would normally be expected, was confined to the Lord Chairman of Quarter Sessions, very properly. The Secretary of State went on to say in column 154 on Second Reading on 8th February that he made appointments on fishing matters to the White Fish Authority and Herring Industry Board. I have some difficulty in understanding how that analogy supports an argument in favour of his qualifications to appoint members of this Commission in the light of the criteria laid down in Clause 2(2). In Committee the Under-Secretary of State advanced a whole series of reasons why this power should be shared. He said that the Secretary of

State appointed sheriffs, court officials and so forth, and he went on to say:
This will not be a body dealing just with lawyers' law but one in which the layman, too, must have every confidence. The Commission must provide not only for the legal revision of the law but for the social, the economic, the political, and the what-you-will revision of the law".—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee A, 4th March, 1965; c. 66.]
But why should not the public have confidence in a body of lawyers selected by the principal Law Officer of the Crown in Scotland? I cannot see why any lack of confidence should flow from that method of selection. If I may say so, there seems to be some confusion of thought here. We are not dealing with a lay body, with a body drawn from a wide source. We are dealing with a body of lawyers whose qualifications satisfy the criteria to which I have referred.
This is not all. We know from the White Paper that the Lord Advocate's Law Reform Committee is to go. I say again—this is my last chance to repeat it—that this is a deplorable decision which has not been justified, especially having regard to the fact that the corresponding committees are retained in England.

Mr. Ross: That has nothing to do with it.

Mr. Wylie: If the right hon. Gentleman will have patience and listen, I shall come to that. I understood from the Under-Secretary of State that the Law Reform Committee is to be replaced by ad hoc committees. The appointments to these ad hoc committees are to be made by the Secretary of State and the Lord Advocate. Thus, the Lord Advocate, whose Committee is being replaced, is not even to be entrusted with the sole responsibility of selecting the membership of the ad hoc committees to perform the work formerly done by his Law Reform Committee.
I can see no reason why there should be this dual responsibility. I do not wish to attack the Lord Advocate because he is not here to defend himself, but cannot believe that he has wholeheartedly agreed to what is proposed. It is a compromise between the Secretary of State, who wants the thing himself, and the Lord Advocate, who tried, apparently unsuccessfully, to exercise his traditional function in the matter.
I speak in all sincerity because we all want the Law Commission in Scotland to get off the ground successfully, and I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will accept the Amendment and leave to the Lord Advocate the important responsibility of making these appointments.

Sir Knox Cunningham: Earlier this evening, I was encouraged by the Secretary of State to dare to take part in a Scottish debate. I am daring now to speak on these two Scottish Amendments. I support what has been said by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Pentlands (Mr. Wylie), and I have some questions to put to the Minister.
Why should we have just the Lord Chancellor in England making the appointments and not, say, the Prime Minister and the Lord Chancellor? Why should Scotland be different? Is there something in Scotland which requires the Secretary of State to intervene? Why is not the Lord Advocate capable of making the appointments himself? Will the Secretary of State be able to disclose some particular interest in the matter? The Secretary of State is apparently to make these appointments, together with the Lord Advocate. We should be told why Scotland is being treated differently from England in this Bill.
I have been encouraged to raise these matters by the Secretary of State. If he is not to reply to the debate, I hope that the Joint Under-Secretary of State, who is to reply, will tell the House why Scotland is being treated differently in this matter.

11.45 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Dr. J. Dickson Mabon): I much regret that the long-distant Presbyterian ancestry of the hon. and learned Member for Antrim, South (Sir Knox Cunningham) is so far stretched that he does not recall that it is sometimes a virtue in Scotland to do things differently from the English. For that matter, the high offices of Secretary of State for Scotland and Lord Advocate are essentially different in constitutional origins and practice, and it is impossible to draw a parallel between the powers of the Lord Chancellor and of the Prime Minister, on the one hand, and those of the Secretary

of State for Scotland and the Lord Advocate, on the other hand.
I was pleased that the expression of good will was mentioned by the former Solicitor-General tonight, because we were anxious in Committee not to have a Division on the constitution of the Scottish Law Commission. I am grateful that that was the case, and I hope that we have tried to conduct an exercise in seeking to get maximum co-operation from the legal profession in Scotland to make the Law Commission for Scotland work. I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman thought that there was some resentment among lawyers in Scotland over this proposal. From the Government side, and the Government offices side, we have not heard much about that resentment. On the contrary, we have heard some pleasant remarks and messages of good will about what will happen, and we hope that in practice we can demonstrate this when the Commission is appointed.

Mr. Wylie: Has the hon. Member read the correspondence in the Scots Law Times in the last few weeks?

Dr. Mabon: I also know who some of the contributors are.

Mr. Wylie: I hope that the hon. Member does not think that I wrote them.

Dr. Mabon: I am not suggesting that. The hon. Member has put his own position clearly in the House, and I respect him for it. We know who are the objectors outside. Many of the original objectors who wrote just before Christmas have long since been converted to the Bill. They thought that it would be an entirely different Bill. Many of the fears which have been expressed will be allayed once the appointments are made.
I promised the hon. Member and my right hon. Friend the Member for Clackmannan and East Stirlingshire (Mr. Woodburn) that I would convey to the Lord Advocate and the Secretary of State the terms of both their arguments. My right hon. Friend has explained why he cannot be here tonight and I accept his explanation, as, I am sure, will the House. Although my response was somewhat vigorous and, in a sense, perhaps, inflexible in defence of the proposition in the Bill, nevertheless I have done so, I hope faithfully, and I must tell them that both the Lord Advocate


and the Secretary of State hold the view that what the hon. Member describes as a compromise—which I think, essentially, is a good solution of a difficult situation—should be kept in the Bill, and that the House ought not to be asked to take sides, either, as my right hon. Friend suggested, in favour of the Secretary of State or, as the hon. Member for Edinburgh, Pentlands (Mr. Wylie) suggested, in favour of the Lord Advocate.
I am sorry that in his anxiety to move the Amendment the hon. Member did me another injustice—but I merely shrink back in wounded horror at another offence on his part—when he said that no proper justification had ever been attempted by any Minister—

Mr. Wylie: I did not say that it was not attempted. I am sure that it was anempted. It was not given.

Dr. Mabon: This is becoming even more painful. May I redirect his attention to my speech—in the words of my hon. Friend, an excellent speech—which I delivered in Committee on 4th March as reported in columns 64, 65 and 66, where there is a complete explanation of the position of the Secretary of State and the Lord Advocate. The principle which he has criticised, which he mentioned during the Committee stage, that the Secretary of State was wholly unsuited—he said "wholly unsuited"—to appoint legal persons to a Law Commission, is all the more remarkable since for years the Secretary of State has exercised a considerable number of powers such as these.
It is the Secretary of State and not the Lord Advocate who is responsible for the appointment and the removal of sheriffs and the organisation of the sheriffs' courts; for the appointment of officials of the High Court of Justiciary and the Court of Session. He is responsible for executive action in relation to the pensions of sheriffs, for the appointrnent of sheriff clerks under the Sheriff Courts and Legal Officers (Scotland) Act, 1927, and, as a result of the Royal Commission on Scottish Affairs, the functions of the appointment of justices of the peace were transferred to the Secretary of State. The rule making functions under the Children and Young Persons (Scotland) Act, 1937, were transferred to him from the Lord Chancellor.
My right hon. Friend the Member for East Stirlingshire has said that this presents an excellent case for excluding the Lord Advocate, but we have taken the view that he should take his legitimate part, as a Minister of the Government, in advising on legal questions within the Government; and the Secretary of State and the Lord Advocate are convinced that they, and their successors in office, can quite easily and willingly co-operate on making these joint appointments.
It may be thought to be a novel and even unique arrangement, but we have tried out many experiments in Scotland. We have done many things for the first time and have shown that they can succeed. The hon. Member for Edinburgh, Pentlands has shown such goodwill toward our efforts that I hope he will not press his point at this stage.

Mr. Wylie: I cannot withdraw. I should like to make it clear that when I spoke of resentment in the legal profession I was not talking of the Bill as a whole but of the content of the Amendment now before us. As the hon. Gentleman knows, there is a great deal of support for the Bill, and it has my support, but I really cannot see any justification for what is proposed in this part of it. The Under-Secretary of State knows that we are dealing with something here which is entirely different from judicial appointments. When it is a question of appointing members of the judiciary from the High Court down to the justices of the peace courts, one is making appointments to constitutional office; and then it is perfectly understandable and proper that the Secretary of State should be responsible for appointments of that nature.
Here we are not concerned with the constitutional machinery, or its salaried staff. These are appointments to a legal Commission, using the word "legal" in its narrow sense; a commission of lawyers, and there is no more justification for the Lord Advocate sharing the responsibility here than for his sharing the responsibility of appointments elsewhere. After all, they are the same type of people; expert lawyers, appointed on the basis of their qualifications and training. The hon. Gentleman would be bound to follow the advice he received from the Lord Advocate, and I


cannot see any justification for the sharing of this responsibility in the way suggested.

Dr. Dickson Mabon: I think the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh, Pentlands (Mr. Wylie) has missed the point. The Commission is not going to deal with "lawyers' law" but with the much broader aspect of the law and, therefore, that is where the joint responsibility comes in. So far as his point about the ad hoc committee is concerned, this is apart from other inquiries, and it will be jointly appointed by the Secretary of State and the Lord Advocate and is considered a most important vehicle for the revision of the law.

Mr. Wylie: I appreciate what the hon. Gentleman is saying, but this is where there seems to be confusion of thought. Lawyers' law is one thing. It is the kind of thing that the Lord Advocate's Law Reform Committee has dealt with. These ad hoc committees are to take the place of the Law Reform Committee. Why should it fall to the Secretary of State to share in appointments to these committees? That is an indefensible proposition.
The Commission will not deal with law with social content. No narrow body of lawyers will do so. It is bound to be delegated or remitted to Departmental committees or Royal Commissions, drawing their membership from a wide field. These are the people who will, presumably, deal with law with a social content.
Having regard to most of what the hon. Gentleman has said in the past, I am sorry that I must dig my toes in on this issue, and I must advise the House to accept the Amendment. I am genuinely sorry that, having compromised on so many things in the Bill, we and the Government have not been able to settle on this one.

Mr. Ross: I am sorry that the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh, Pentlands (Mr. Wylie) is not able to withdraw the Amendment. It is regrettable that when he was a Law Officer he was not a Member of this House. Now he is in the House, he is no longer a Law Officer. He has only been a Member since the last election. I do not think

that he fully appreciates that the great difference in respect of Scotland and England in this way is in the actual office of Secretary of State. I combine within my person about six or seven different Ministries. [Interruption.] Does the hon. and learned Member for Antrim, South (Sir Knox Cunningham) wish to interrupt?

Sir Knox Cunningham: I was only saying that the right hon. Gentleman was personally a magnificent Pooh-bah.

Mr. Ross: I thought that the hon. and learned Gentleman would say something like that, It was his Government who transferred the latest acquisitions to the sphere of influence of the Secretary of State for Scotland. They transferred to the Secretary of State responsibility for roads and for the electricity authorities. The hon. and learned Gentleman was close to the seat of power then and had a lot to do in respect of appreciation of the office of Secretary of State. But if he has nothing more sensible to say than his juvenile intervention he would do better to keep quiet.

Sir Knox Cunningham: rose—

Mr. Ross: I will not give way.

Sir Knox Cunningham: I was only going to compliment the right hon. Gentleman.

Mr. Wylie: rose—

Mr. Ross: No. I am sorry. I have just started. The hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh, Pentlands has already—unusually—had two speeches.

Sir Knox Cunningham: Do not be so touchy.

Mr. Robert Cooke: rose—

Mr. Ross: No. The hon. Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Robert Cooke) is the last person I would give way to.
If the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh, Pentlands would look even to the history of the changes in respect of the office of Secretary of State he would appreciate its unique nature. It was not without reason that my right hon. Friend the Member for Clackmannan and East Stirlingshire (Mr. Woodburn) argued that this should be the Secretary of State's responsibility.

Mr. Wylie: The right hon. Member for Clackmannan and East Stirlingshire (Mr. Woodburn) is an ex-Secretary of State. One can understand his atittude.

12 m.

Mr. Ross: Indeed. One can also understand the belated interest of former Law Officers. The position is that many of the duties of the Lord High Chancellor of Scotland were, by the Act of 1885, by practice, usage and custom, continued within the transfer to the Secretary of State of the Great Seal. [Interruption.] I know it is very interesting. It is also very important. In 1885 they decided that these appointments by law and by custom should be resided in that ancient office. The hon. and learned Gentleman failed to appreciate that what we sought to do was not to find a compromise but to regularise the position. What we are doing is to bring in the Lord Advocate on whose advice not only the Secretary of State but the Government must lean. I would have thought the lawyers in Scotland would have appreciated that. We are regularising the position in respect of the Scottish Office and the Lord Advocate.

Mr. Robert Cooke: Earlier, when the right hon. Gentleman refused to give way to me he was whining about the Secretary of State having too much to do and said that it was our Government which placed this upon him. What does he intend to do to divest himself of some of his duties?

Mr. Ross: I was not complaining but drawing attention to the unique position of the Secretary of State. That was the reason why in the Bill we followed this procedure in the appointment of the Law Commissioners of the Lord Advocate and Secretary of State.
Anyone with an appreciation of history and appreciation of the facts will realise why we have done this and why we think it is right.

Sir Knox Cunningham: I was sorry that the right hon. Gentleman was so touchy, as I have the greatest admiration for him. I have no objection to him holding the office that he is holding. Indeed, I think it is a very good thing. He should not think that I was criticising him. He was very forceful in Opposition, and I hope that he will be forceful in Government.

Mr. Ross: Personalities do not come into this. It concerns the Secretary of State whoever he happens to be. We are not talking about me personally but about the position of the Secretary of State. I would have thought that the hon. Gentleman would have appreciated that.

Amendment negatived.

Clause 3.—(FUNCTIONS OF THE COMMISSION.)

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Samuel Storey): The next Amendment selected is Amendment No. 8 and it may be convenient to discuss with it Amendment No. 7.

Sir Eric Fletcher: If it is not out of order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, I would like, being in an accommodating mood, to move Amendment No. 7. It seems to be acceptable and I would like to be permitted to move it and not Amendment No. 8.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: An hon. Gentleman who has given notice will have to move it.

Sir D. Renton: I beg to move Amendment No. 7, in page 2, line 24, to leave out "rules of" and insert "such".
This is simply a drafting Amendment. I hope that it does not seem too much of an anti-climax after the discussion on the constitutional history of Scotland. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for saying that he agrees with the Amendment. I am only sorry that the sphere of agreement is so small, but the evening is fairly young and there will be later opportunities for the Minister to show his open-mindedness.

Sir Knox Cunningham: I support my right hon. and learned Friend in his Amendment. I suspect that the Government will accede to it, and I am delighted that they should do so. It is early hours in the morning yet, and as the morning rolls on we hope that the Government will be just as accommodating with some of the other Amendments.

Amendment agreed to.

Sir J. Hobson: I beg to move Amendment No. 9, in page 2, line 29, at the end to insert:
by a Minister of the Crown.


The object of the Amendment is to ensure that the duties of the Commission, in both England and Scotland, are limited to work and approaches which are referred or made to it by the Government of the day, who, as I have pointed out earlier, will retain the overall responsibility for the forwarding of law reform within the community. We are grateful to the Minister without Portfolio for accepting the last Amendment. His generosity is strictly limited, but I hope that he will be able to add to the little pile of generosity by accepting this Amendment, too.
Without the Amendment, the position of the Commission, in both England and Scotland, might be somewhat anomalous, because it will be under a duty not only to receive but to consider proposals for reform of the law which may be made or referred to it. There is, perhaps, a substantial danger under the existing form of words that the Commission might be utterly swamped with its duty to consider, because it would not only be under the duty to receive and consider proposals for reform of the law made to it by various organisations of Government and by Ministers of the Crown, but it would be bound to receive and consider any proposal that any Member of Parliament or Member of the House of Lords cared to make to it, and those people could make their proposals direct.
Not only could any body or organisation throughout the length and breadth of the country write to the Commission. I do not object to the Commission receiving proposals, but it is the addition of the duty to consider them that is awkward, because every body and every organisation, every citizen and every crackpot, could insist not only that the Commission receives their letters but that it considers them.
The Minister without Portfolio said in Committee that the Commission could keep a card index, but the keeping of a card index is not considering proposals. If the Commission is under a duty to consider every proposal which is referred to it for the reform of the law, it will be in an embarrassing position. It may be that large numbers of proposals which will be made by citizens to the Commission have already been considered by the Government Departments concerned and rejected.
We all know, as Members of Parliament, that we receive very frequently from citizens proposals for the amendment of the law, proposals which are quite hopeless, which possibly have been rejected by the House only a short time before. If we happen to be on the Government side we know that many proposals which are made are wholly unacceptable to the Government as a whole, and which the Government would never consider, or may have already considered and rejected. It may be that, because of what is proposed by a Government Department, proposals which are made to the Law Commission by an outside body behind the back of the Government Department concerned are in direct conflict with what that Government Department itself is considering and proposing. One would therefore have the situation in which the Commissioners would or might be under the statutory duty to consider large numbers of proposals which there was not the slightest prospect of putting into operation, or which might be in direct conflict with the proposals which the Government themselves are about to produce.
I would have thought it highly desirable that the proposals for the reform of the law which the Commissioners are to receive should be referred to them by a Minister of the Crown. This, of course, would enable Parliament also to have some control over what is being referred to the Commissioners, because it would enable Ministers of the Crown to be questioned about whether proposals have or have not been referred to the Commissioners.
Suppose the present Government go out of power. Is it suggested that the Labour Party as a whole, or ex-Ministers, should be able to write to the Commissioners and ask that they should consider certain proposals which the Labour Party itself has, say, about the Trade Disputes Act, or something of a highly political nature? Or, conversely, is it proposed that the Opposition Front Bench Members, or the Conservative Party as a whole, should send direct to the Commissioners their proposals for the reform of important matters of law, whether they have a social content, or whether they be solely matters of lawyers' law?
Just suppose that an important body, be it a political party or a major industry or a trade union, does send a proposal on a matter of major public importance and asks the Commissioners to consider it. Are the Commissioners to be able to do nothing about it? The body which sends the proposal will be constantly writing to ask the result of the Commissioners' consideration: have they made a report to the Minister, have they an answer they can send to the body in question? If after a period of eighteen months or two years the Commissioners have done nothing about it or say, "We are considering it", is there not likely to be public criticism that an important matter of the reform of the law, of a political or social or economic or legal nature, has not yet been considered by the Commissioners?
Purely as a matter of administration, I would have thought it would be much more satisfactory that proposals for reform of the law should be made direct from the Government or a Minister, or Members of Parliament through the Government or a Minister, for then the Commissioners would know what was in the minds of the Departments suggesting the proposals. They would know the aspects of the reform of the law having the highest prority in the programme which the Lord Chancellor was proposing, and they would know which matters were outside the programme of the Lord Chancellor, but were due for consideration by the Government departmentally. It would assist them in considering the proposals and in giving advice and help.
12.15 a.m.
Of course, the number of topics which the Commissioners can consider is infinite, and I am quite sure that the Government themselves, and all the Departments of Government, will keep the Commissioners very busy indeed through their own demands and requests. There is in the Bill an open-ended commitment of the Law Commissioners to consider anything which anybody refers to them. If they do nothing, if they just make no report and say, month after month, that they are still considering it, they will look very foolish. I do not say that they should have a writ of mandamus against them, but I think that there might be substantial public criticism if important

bodies or organisations within the State asked them to consider proposals and got no reply. I submit, in a spirit of helpfulness, that it is right that the Government themselves should be the body which will largely use this Commission.
I should have thought that the Government will occupy at least 85 or 90 per cent. of the energies of the Commission merely in dealing with programmes submitted to the Lord Chancellor and other proposals which Government Departments have to make, and that this is the method by which the Law Commissioners should be used, namely, that if good ideas come from outside the Government, the responsible Minister will want to refer them to the Law Commissioners, but that he and the Government should have some control over the flow of work to the Law Commissioners. Otherwise, we shall find the wires getting crossed and the Law Commissioners performing a dual duty, not only to the Minister to whom they have to give assistance and advice, but to the community at large. It may well be that they will be wholly overburdened and unable to compete with both and not know to which proposals they should give priority, those received from outside bodies, or those from Government Departments.

Sir Knox Cunningham: I do not want to delay the House at this early hour, but I should like to support my right hon. and learned Friend, and, in doing so, to say that if we do not add these words so that the present Clause 3(1,a) reads:
…to receive and consider any proposals for the reform of the law which may be made or referred to them"—
I would say—
by a Minister of the Crown.
there will be, as my right hon. and learned Friend has said, an open end. There are 50 million people in this country, and at some time or another a great number of them have ideas for reforming the law. It is not right to say that if they send in those ideas they can be received. There is a definite duty on the Law Commissioners to consider them; they must do so. If they do so, the process may simply choke up and they will not be able to carry out their functions properly.
It would be most helpful to add the words,
…by a Minister of the Crown
so that those recommendations which a Minister thought right he would recommend to them and they would get on with their work.
I think that this is a most helpful Amendment. I hope that the Minister will be just as accommodating now as he was a little earlier, and I hope that he will accept this Amendment.

Mr. Robert Cooke: I am glad that my right hon. and learned Friend for Warwick and Leamington (Sir J. Hobson) put down this Amendment, because it gives me an opportunity to ask a few questions of the Government on what would appear to be an important matter. Indeed, it would seem, from what has happened on this Amendment, that one has to examine most minutely every word of every line of every Bill introduced by the present Government, because all sorts of very wide issues are raised by the wording of line 29 and by the Amendment.
One of the large stable of Scottish Ministers, all of whom have now left the Chamber—I am not sure whether it is for good, but all of them seem to have left—said earlier on another Amendment that the Commission was not just to deal with lawyers' law. It would seem that the words now in line 29 are drafted in such a way that ordinary private citizens could make their representations to the Commission. What my right hon. and learned Friend is proposing is a filtration process by which those suggestions coming from any quarter other than the Government can get to the Commission only if they have the support of a Minister of the Crown. I can see his point of view there, though, speaking as the only layman who has spoken from this side of the House, I feel that I must probe a little deeper.
I arrived at these proceedings when they were already under way on an earlier Amendment to find my two hon. Friends the Member for Bebington (Mr. Howe) and the Member for Chelmsford (Mr. St. John-Stevas) indulging in a sort of lawyers' mutual admiration club on the back benches. My hon. Friend the Member for Bebington shakes his head, but I think he referred to my hon. Friend

the Member for Chelmsford as having been removed from the active practice of the Bar to some Olympian or ethereal heights. I am not sure whether regular appearances on controversial television programmes come within this category.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: Order. This has nothing to do with the Amendment that we are discussing.

Mr. Cooke: I was just about to come back to the wording of the Clause, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, and say that it had occurred to me as well as to my right hon. and learned Friend that, as the Clause is now drafted, it would seem unnecessary for the Commission to take note of suggestions from Members of this House and another place, from public bodies of one kind or another and from voluntary bodies and private citizens. I am sure that almost every subject of a Private Member's Bill would perhaps, instead of being brought to this House for an airing—measures which perhaps could never become law in the ordinary course of events—be sent straight to the Commissioners and might considerably clog up their proceedings.
My right hon. and learned Friend did a valuable service to the House in referring to those eccentric members of the community who are perpetually inventing new ways in which the law might be amended or improved. There are members of the community who are continually up against the police or the magistrates, and if the Clause were left as it is now, they could in a most ingenious way impede the Commissioners in doing the valuable work which many of us would like to see them doing. Anyone who has been a Member of this House for any length of time knows that he has among his constituents most ingenious gentlemen, and some women, too, who write to him endlessly with proposals for amending and improving the law.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: Does my hon. Friend find that his own functions as a Member of Parliament are impeded by this correspondence?

Mr. Cooke: No, but if my hon. Friend will add up the correspondence to 630 Members of Parliament he will realise that the outpourings of the eccentrics in the country channelled through all the


Members of Parliament might considerably clog up the proceedings of the Commission. After all, my hon. Friend has been in the House only a short time, and the eccentrics have hardly had a chance to get to work upon him, but no doubt they will do so.
I should like also to take up the remark made, I think, by the Minister without Portfolic earlier, which no doubt he will use again when he comes to reply to the speeches on this Amendment. He said earlier that the intentions of the present Government were not to implement such and such a Clause in such and such a way. Really, that is simply not good enough. As we have discovered to our cost on many earlier occasions, the House can pass a Bill and make an Act and then one finds the interpretation of it is very different to what Parliament intended.
It is not the least bit of good for a Minister to say that it is not the intention—

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: Order. Again this is nothing to do with the Amendment which we are discussing.

Mr. Cooke: I am sorry if I have again transgressed, but I was trying to anticipate what the hon. Gentleman may say in reply to some of the points which have been made. I will cut out my references to certain other Acts which have not been interpreted quite as Parliament intended.
I would like the hon. Gentleman in replying to the speeches on this Amendment to tell the House whether in fact line 29 is really the Government's implementation of its pledge on the Ombudsman. Is this the channel through which the request for law reform—

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman must really come to the Amendment.

Mr. Cooke: I had no intention of pursuing that point any further but to come back to the actual words in line 29 which I have referred to on a number of occasions. The Clause as now drafted does appear to give an opportunity to any citizen, anyone in the United Kingdom, anyone at all, to send in a closely reasoned, or otherwise, suggestion for reform or improvement of the law.

Hon. Members: Why not?

Mr. Cooke: Hon. Members ask why not. My right hon. and learned Friend did a service to the House in illustrating some of the ways in which the excellent work of this Commission might be impeded if people were to write continually to the Commission and get it involved in all manner of activities which would impede its true and proper function.
My right hon. and learned Friend has proposed a most suitable compromise—namely, that Ministers of the Crown, who are pretty human people one would hope, should be required to filter these suggestions and see which ones should be sent on to the Commission. The Commission would therefore be enabled to get on with studying those things which need study, and the frivolous suggestions would fall by the wayside. I hope that this Amendment will be accepted.

Sir Eric Fletcher: I must accept the assurance of the hon. and learned Member for Antrim, South (Sir Knox Cunningham), that this Amendment was put down in a helpful spirit. But the hon. and learned Gentleman supported the argument by some rather far-fetched examples of what would be the effect of this Clause if the Amendment was not accepted. We canvassed this matter very thoroughly on the Committee stage, and I think the Committee were satisfied with the explanation I then gave why the Government thought it essential that these words should not be introduced into the Clause.
12.30 a.m.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman must not look at this particular paragraph in isolation from the other duties put upon the Commission. This is only one of the duties of the Commission, and I must make it clear to hon. Members who, like the hon. Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Robert Cooke), did not have the advantage of taking part in the Committee debates, that it quite definitely is the intention of the Government that the Law Commission should be able to receive and consider proposals coming from any source.
It is perfectly true that the bulk of its work and activities will be as to 85 per cent. or more taken up with remits which it receives from the Government—dealing with priorities, proposals, programmes and so on—but, in addition, it is clearly


intended—and that is why it is stated in the Bill—that the Commission should, as one of its functions, be able to receive proposals for law reform from any source and not merely from Ministers of the Crown.
It is intended that suggestions which from time to time might be made by the Bar Council, the Law Society, local government organisations and so on should be made to the Law Commission and considered by its members. It is intended that hon. Members of Parliament should be able to pass on suggestions. Sometimes such suggestions are made at Question Time and sometimes in the form of suggestions to Ministers. It is intended that hon. Members of both this House and of another place should be able, when they get instances where the shoe pinches, so to speak, about a particular problem, should be able to report it to the Commission. It is intended that the Commission should, therefore, in that sense act as a clearing house for ideas and should be able to collate those ideas and possibly use them in forming various programmes and suggestions for law reform.
It is wrong to suggest that because inevitably some proposals will come from what the right hon. and learned Gentleman called crackpots and what the hon. Member for Bristol, West called eccentrics, all suggestions will be immature. I am sure that the members of the Commission will have no greater difficulty in dealing with crackpot suggestions than the hon. Member for Bristol, West has when he receives such suggestions. They will know what to do with them, just as well as the hon. Member would know. They will be able to form their own opinions, and I am sure that nobody need have any fear that suggestions of that kind will result in the activities of the Commission being cluttered up or diverted from the serious work it will be appointed to do.

Sir Knox Cunningham: Will it be the intention of the Government that hon. Members of this House, when they receive matters concerning legal reform, should be able to send them at once to the Commission and get a reply from it?

Sir E. Fletcher: Hon. Members will send them on. That should be of advantage to hon. Members.

Sir J. Hobson: That last answer of the Minister puzzles me. We are in the position now that the hon. Gentleman is saying that serious proposals—and I am not now dealing with crackpot ones—should be sent to the Commission by, say, a trade union, a political party, church or anyone else; sent directly or through an hon. Member of this House. He is saying that the Commission is bound to receive it—it cannot help opening its post—it is bound to consider it; but it is not bound to answer it. It is under a statutory duty to consider rationally and as part of its duties proposals so made by all hon. Members of this House.
If the Commission is under a duty to consider it, are hon. Members and others not entitled to expect to get a reply? If so, and if every proposal from every hon. Member goes for consideration to the Commission, what is the Commission to reply? Is it to say, "We think that this is a very good idea and we have suggested it two or three times to the Government", and is it to deal with this mass of material on every sort of topic concerning the law of England together with, as the Minister mentioned, 85 per cent. of its activities being on remit from the Government?
This is not a matter that is left by the Bill as it stands in a satisfactory way. If, as is rightly envisaged, the Law Commissioners will occupy 85 per cent. of their time in considering the remits from Ministers and the Government, the obligation to deal with the proposals that every citizen or Member of Parliament makes and send an answer will lead in the end to their not knowing whether they have to give priority to such suggestions or to proposals which Ministers are making to them. The wires will get really crossed, because people will make many serious suggestions which the Government have said they do not want to deal with in this or the next Session or even in this Parliament and the Commissioners will be utterly wasting their time, which they are under statutory obligation to spend, in considering and answering matters on which the Government will not legislate.
A Member of Parliament is entitled to say to the Law Commissioners, "What has happened to the proposal I put to you and where are your recommendations


on it?". I am anxious from the point of view of proper administration, whichever party is in power, to see that we do not get this machine bogged down by a lot of outside suggestions. I hope, therefore, that the hon. Gentleman will consider the matter.

Sir Eric Fletcher: I appreciate that the right hon. and learned Gentleman is quite serious about the representations he is making. I am sure that he also realises that it would not be right for the initiation of proposals to be limited to Ministers. It must be reasonable that reputable and responsible bodies like the Law Society and the Bar Council and local government associations should be able to make representations to the Commissioners. The work of the Commissioners will not function unless bodies of that kind which have ideas from time to time long ahead of any Government Department can forward their suggestions to them.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman is underestimating the capacity of the Law Commissioners with regard to their task if he thinks that they will be submerged by these proposals. They will know how to handle them and what proposals are worthy of serious consideration and which merely fit for a pigeonhole or something else. They will know that their duties are not limited to paragraph (a) and that they have to consider proposals in the light of their other duties of making recommendations to Ministers for programmes.

Mr. Ian Percival: I should like to support my right hon and learned Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Sir John Hobson) and add one further consideration which I would ask him to take into account. I do not think, with respect, that the Minister without Portfolio is right in saying that this is a question of the initiation of ideas. Nothing should be done, of course, which would stifle the initiation of ideas, but what is of tremendous importance is the siting and vetting of ideas so that such time and talent as is available may be directed to ideas which will bear fruit.
The national pastime for the last few years has been running the railways. Almost every one of our fellow citizens discovered when railways became the talk of the day that he could run them

better than the experts. It may well be that when law reform becomes the talk of the day and the sole topic of conversation everyone may decide that he can reform the law better. There may well be a substantial flow of ideas from hon. Members and the difficulty of the Clause is that it requires the Commissioners themselves, not a body of their staff set up for the purpose of sifting and vetting, to consider any ideas referred to them. It is highly probable that most of the ideas sent to them will be pigeonholed after consideration in favour of the immediate consideration of better prospects. But who can decide whether they should be pigeon-holed or not without looking carefully at them?
I am sure that the Minister did not mean to give the impression that the Commissions would just sit there, taking a quick look at things and saying, "Out with that, out with that, but we will take this one". That would be making a mockery of the serious work of the Commissions. But the Clause as it stands requires the Commissions themselves to consider these questions, not just a single Commissioner. in the case of many tribunals, the initial work can be done by one commissioner. For instance, in the Foreign Compensation Commission, an initial decision may be made by one commissioner and then, if the decision is not acceptable to the applicant, the matter goes before the other commissioners.
If there were a provision that one Commissioner might consider proposals put up and do the preliminary sifting, that might save some time. But, as the Clause stands, everything sent in by anyone has to be considered by the Commission. We must not think that it will all come from responsible bodies. The Law Society and the Bar Council will, before making representations, ensure that, at least in their opinion, they are worthy of consideration. But this may not apply to everybody. All the proposals which are put to the Commission will have to go to the whole Commission, and, assuming, as we must, that the Commission will do its work carefully, there will be an awful lot of time wasted in sorting out the wheat from the chaff.
Let there be some process for vetting and sifting. Let that burden be taken off the Commissions themselves by some means. The Amendment introduces a


practical and sensible means of doing so. It is sufficiently well known now that somebody wishing to raise an alleged grievance or to air what is supposed to be a good idea has only to write to his Member of Parliament and then, if his Member does not pursue it, he can press him further about it. There one will have the first sifting process. It will be for the Member not just to pass everything on but to apply his mind to see whether there is something in it. If he thinks that there is something in it, he can put it to the Minister, or, perhaps, the Lord Chancellor rather than the Minister, and apply pressure if he thinks it right to do so. The Minister in charge of the Department or the Lord Chancellor will do the second sifting.
When the matter finally goes to the Commission, the Commission can apply its talents and time to considering suggestions which, after the sifting process, have been regarded by more than one person as worthy of examination. I urge the Minister without Portfolio to reconsider his attitude. The Clause as it stands will result in an immense waste of time.

12.45 a.m.

Sir D. Renton: The Minister without Portfolio was quite right to say that we discussed this matter fairly fully in Committee, but, at the end of our debate, my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon, South (Sir H. Lucas-Tooth), who, like the right hon. Member for Clackmannan and East Stirlingshire (Mr. Woodburn), is across the Border at this moment and is unable to be here tonight, said, when he withdrew his Amendment, that it was a matter which we should have to consider again in the light of what was said hereafter.
During the discussion of the same Amendment in Committee we were not clarified in our minds by the hon. Member's replies, but we felt that when we discussed later Amendments the position would become plainer. That did not happen. That is why we are having this discussion. So much has been put to the Government tonight and in Committee about the effect of subsection (1,a), to which there has not been a satisfactory answer, that I feel obliged, for the first time for a long time, to address the Committee.
Will the hon. Member consider several points which have not been emphasised during the discussion? First, has he considered the effect on Parliamentary Questions of making it a statutory obligation on the Commission to consider any proposals for the reform of the law which may be made to them by anyone in the world? There is no limit whatever. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] If hon.
Members disagree, let them read the Bill. The operative words are at the beginning,
It shall be the duty of each of the Commissions…
In line 26 we read,
and for that purpose—(a) to receive and consider any proposals for the reform of the law which may be made or referred to them".
If that does not mean by anybody in the world, it should say so. There is no limit whatever to the statutory duty laid on the Commission. If the Bill is not amended as suggested it would be in order for an hon. Member to put a Question to the Minister without Portfolio or for a Member of another place to put a Question to the Lord Chancellor asking whether—[Interruption.] I am sure that hon. Members want to make progress tonight. I am putting the matter as succinctly as I can.
I do not know whether hon. Members have lost the thread of what I was saying. I certainly have not done so, and perhaps I had better start the sentence again. If a proposal for law reform is sent to the Commission from anywhere, it will be in order for a Member of either House to put down a Question to the appropriate Member of the Government—to the hon. Gentleman as long as he is Minister Without Portfolio—asking whether the Commission have considered that proposal. [HON. MEMBERS: "Why not?"] If hon. Members—especially those who have been here for a good many years—will look back over their correspondence they will realise that each is only one of about 600 Members who get many suggestions in the course of a year for the reform of the law. Once the Commission gets under way, there will undoubtedly be people, mostly thoughtless and some of them perhaps crackpots, but nonetheless thoughtless, who will get it into their heads that their pet ideas about the reform of the law can not only be referred to the Commission but must at


all costs be considered by the Commission. They will demand that the Commission considers their proposals arid, if they do not get satisfaction, they will then start asking hon. Members to table Questions in this House.
One point which was mentioned in the Committee but which has not been stressed tonight, although it is essential that it should be borne in mind, is that any single proposal for the reform of the law engages the attention of some Minister or other. The number of matters which can be described as "lawyers' law" is very small and narrow indeed and, before the Commission could consider any proposal for very long, it would have to refer it to the Minister responsible. For that reason alone, it would save effort and the expenses of administration if we stuck to the well-tried principle of referring reform of the law to the Minister concerned in the first place. If he should want to avail himself of the expert services of the Commission, that is another matter, but to have this dual process going on, as we shall have if the Amendment is not accepted, will mean a serious waste of time in Government departments.
It astonishes me that the Minister, with his long experience of this House, although not as yet of Government, who is doing such splendid work on the Front Bench within the sphere of his special responsibilities, should not have alerted his right hon. and noble Friend the Lord Chancellor of the position which would be reached if this Clause remains as it is.
With all respect to the Minister, I must point out that those of us on this side of the House who are interested in this Bill have been very selective about our criticisms. We have tried to show as much understanding as we can and have not been impatient. We have tried reasonably to persuade, and that is what I am trying to do yet again. I know that I have tried unsuccessfully before, but I hope that the hon. Gentleman will realise that we have made a substantial point. I hope that it will be given consideration in another place if not here tonight.

Mr. James A. Kilfedder: I rise to support this Amendment because I am anxious to see reform not only in the law itself but in the whole system of

law, and I fear that if the Commission becomes bogged down in its work and is eventually brought to a complete stop by a plethora of suggestions as some of my hon. Friends have mentioned, possibly from 50 million citizens of this country, then hope of bringing about changes in our system of law, unchanged for centuries, will not be realised.
What worries me as a very new hon. Member of this House and as one who has experienced the system of Question Time, with no priority given—the Question is taken as it is placed in the Table Office—is the matter of what reform will be taken on the suggestions possibly of 50 million people about the reforms they may wish to see, and the priorities that will be given to those suggestions. If it is to get all these suggestions and recommendations from all the people—many of whom are certainly not crackpots—then the Commission will be bogged down.
I would expect reforms to be suggested by the Bar Council, the Law Society and other eminent bodies, and by the Government. We in this House would have our own recommendations to make. We could put them to the Minister responsible and they would be put by him to the Commission. At Question Time we could find out what was happening to them. But what about the suggestions made by ordinary people? Would they get a reply? Is the Commission to spend a great deal of time setting our reasons for rejecting them?
I am deeply concerned about this. I hope that the Commission brings about great changes in the law and engenders great changes in our system of law. I hope, therefore, that the Government will accept the Amendment, which would mean that any considerations and proposals for reform would be made by a Minister of the Crown and that the Commission would therefore have as much time as possible to consider serious recommendations reaching it via a Minister of the Crown. I think it would be the wish of the country that the Commission should have the fullest time possible to consider serious recommendations and not be bothered by crackpot suggestions that might be put forward.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Samuel Storey): The Question is—

Sir D. Renton: I understood, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, that the Minister without Portfolio was going to reply to the debate.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: Order. The right hon. and learned Member—

Mr. George Lawson: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. How many times can an hon. Member speak on Report stage?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: Order. I was calling the attention of the right hon. and learned Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton) to the fact that he had no right to speak again.

Sir D. Renton: I was not attempting to do so. [HON. MEMBERS: "Order."] If we are on a point of order, may I point out, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, that I was not rising to make another speech? I have addressed the House once and only once. I was calling your attention to the fact—

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: The hon. and learned Gentleman cannot speak again without leave of the House.

Sir D. Renton: I was rising on a point of order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, which was to call your attention to the fact that you appeared to be collecting voices without having noticed that the Minister without Portfolio was moving towards the Dispatch Box—wishing, I assume, to reply further to the debate, which, of course, he has the right to do.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: The Minister has the right of reply if he wishes, but I looked at him before I began to put the Question. He showed no sign of rising. If he wishes to do so, he can.

Sir Eric Fletcher: I was not sure whether I had the right to speak for the second time to an Amendment on Report.

Mr. Lawson: The Minister has already spoken twice. Does he have the right to reply without permission of the House, Mr. Deputy-Speaker?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: The mover of the Amendment and the Minister in charge of the Bill can speak a second time.

Mr. Lawson: The Minister has already spoken twice. Does he have the right to speak for the third or even the fourth time?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: That is the right of the mover of the Amendment and the Minister in charge of the Bill.

1.0 a.m.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: On a point of order, do I have the right to speak, Mr. Deputy-Speaker?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: If the hon. Gentleman has not spoken then he has a right to speak, but I have not yet seen him rise.

Sir Eric Fletcher: In deference to the wishes of the House, I will endeavour to be brief. It is my misfortune if I have failed to explain to the right hon. and learned Gentleman why it is impossible for the Government to accept his Amendment. He must appreciate that the effect of his Amendment would be to exclude not only the crackpots but responsible bodies such as the Law Society, Bar Council and local government organisations from making recommendations direct to the Law Commissioners.

Sir J. Hobson: It does not require a statutory authority to receive a letter from the Bar Council. We are complaining that the Statutory Committee has not only to receive the letter but to consider it as well.

Sir E. Fletcher: The Amendment would prevent them receiving it as well as considering it. I recognise the intention of the Amendment, but it is the intention of the Government that it shall be entirely for the Commissioners, who will be emminent people, to decide what weight they should give to any proposals. If they came from a crackpot source then the Commissioners would know what to do with them. If the source were a recognised and responsible body, their proposals would be of value to the Government, the Commissioners and the community and would enable the Commission to act as a clearing house and collate a great many valuable suggestions for incorporation in such recommendations as they may wish to make to the Government of the day.
It cannot be seriously suggested that they will have to give a lengthy and considered reply to every suggestion from


every crackpot source. Nor can it be suggested that this is impinging on or interfering in any way with the duties of Members of Parliament. Hon. Members are frequently asking Ministers to introduce legislation of some sort or another. Ministers say they will consider it, and in due course they do. This Bill is necessary because so many valuable suggestions on law reform do not get entertained because there is no centralised Government machinery whose function it is to deal exclusively with matters of law reform. It is our intention that there should be.
I do not imagine that the right hon. and learned Gentleman will pester Ministers of the Crown and ask me whether the Law Commissioners have considered some crackpot suggestion. That would be a stupid Question for any hon. Member to ask, and he would know the kind of reply that he would get. I have endeavoured to convince the Opposition that it is part of our plan that the Law Commissioners should be able to reply to suggestions from any source and deal with them in accordance with their merits.
However, that will be only one of their functions to be dealt with in relation to paragraph (a, b, c, d and e) of subsection (1) which are their primary functions.

Mr. Robert Cooke: Will the hon. Gentleman clarify one point? He has used the words "clearing house" and said that the Law Commissioners will have to deal with suggestions from crackpots—although I use the word eccentrics. Are the Law Commissioners to have a vast secretariat and staff to do some filtering for them?

Sir E. Fletcher: If the hon. Gentleman will look at Clause 5 he will see provision is made for them to have a staff.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: I do not wish to prolong the discussion or oppose in any way my right hon. and learned Friend's Amendment. I suggest some guidance could be obtained on the topic from the experience of the Law Revision Commission of New York, of which a valuable account is given in the January edition of the Modern Law Review. This precise problem has arisen in the work of that Commission.
The Commission is free to receive suggestions for reform from anyone—from the Government, the legislature, lawyers or members of the public. The Commission solves the problem by having a study list, on which are put forward the serious suggestions for law reform. In deciding what to put on the study list, which is given prolonged and serious consideration, the Commission's primary consideration is the need for the reform that is put forward. It may be helpful to have this in mind when considering the problem.

Amendment negatived.

Sir D. Renton: I beg to move Amendment No. 10, in page 3, line 1, to leave out "assistance" and to insert "advice."

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: I think that it will be for the convenience of the House to take at the same time Amendment No. 11, in line 1, after "departments," insert:
if requested to do so by the department making any such request,
and Amendment No. 12, in line 1, leave out from "departments" to end of line 4.

Sir D. Renton: I agree, Mr. Deputy-Speaker.
Paragraph (e) of Clause 3 (1) places upon the Commission a duty—I stress that it is a duty, because doubt arose about this in Committee—
to provide assistance to government departments and, at the request of the Minister, to other authorities or bodies concerned with proposals for the reform or amendment of any branch of the law.
I said in Committee, and I still consider, that this is the major blemish in the Bill and the provision which is most likely to give rise to difficulties. In Standing Committee we took the matter to a Division and were defeated by one vote only. These three Amendments are a constructive effort to overcome the difficulties which, we believe, are inherent in paragraph (e).
During an earlier discussion tonight, the Minister without Portfolio said, when discussing the position of High Court judges in relation to the Bill, "I would be shocked if a High Court judge were to assume executive functions in Whitehall, and he will not have to do so under the Bill." I hope that I have correctly noted at least the effect of what the hon.


Gentleman said. HANSARD will show, the day after tomorrow, whether I am exactly right in the words used by the hon. Gentleman, but I have no doubt that that is the effect of what he said.
I agree entirely with what the hon. Gentleman said. He would, I am sure, agree that when the Commission, presided over by a High Court judge, is given the duty of providing assistance to Government Departments, that is carrying out an executive function in Whitehall. There can be no doubt about it. I assume, therefore, that the hon. Gentleman will be grateful for these Amendments, especially for No. 10. The giving of advice could, perhaps, even be said to be an executive function in Whitehall, but there is not the slightest doubt that providing assistance involves executive responsibility. So I would hope that the first of these Amendments need take up very little time and that the Government would agree with us, more especially as the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, replying to the debate we had in Standing Committee, said that
if a Department is itself contemplating a draft Bill which involves the reform of the law or the amendment of a particular branch of the law, it is perfectly reasonable that it should be able to ask the Commission for advice"—
I stress that word, because that is the word he used—
and, indeed, the Commission should feel obliged to give advice on it. The reference here is not just to the English Commission but to the Scottish Commission as well."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee A, 9th March, 1965; c. 127.]
It was pointed out—and this is a subsidiary point on this Amendment—that the word "assistance" is somewhat ambiguous, one which sometimes has financial implications, though I must say I would not expect it to have financial implications here; but "advice" does seem to be the better word, more appropriate in this context, as well as reflecting the Government's intentions.
As to Amendment No. 11, I would ask the House to bear in mind that the duty to provide assistance or advice, as the case may be, to Government Departments is not dependent upon the Minister having requested that advice or on a Government Department having requested it, but when we come to the Commissioners giving assistance

to other authorities or bodies concerned with proposals for the reform or amendment of any branch of the law
we find written into the Bill a condition that it must be
at the request of the Minister".
That leads us into the somewhat strange position that the Commission apparently has a roving commission to give assistance to Government Departments even when not requested to do so. That is the position which we reach, and it is not a satisfactory one.
Again, it seems to me to be in accordance with the Government's intention, although the intention is not stated in the Bill, that words such as we put forward in Amendment No. 11 should be inserted. Again one can refer to the speech of the Under-Secretary of State on that same occasion, for he said that
it is perfectly reasonable that it"—
that is, the Government Department—
should be able to ask the Commission…"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee A, 9th March, 1965; c. 127.]
The hon. Gentleman there clearly contemplated that a Government Department would make the request to the Commission before the assistance would be given.
It was not only he but also the Minister without Portfolio who took this view, and the latter took it even more strongly, because he said:
The intention is to enable the Commission, if assistance is desired and requested by a Government Department, to give it to the Department concerned."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee A, 9th March, 1965; c. 121.]
There was another quotation, but I shall not trouble the House with it because I have not got it ready, but the hon. Gentleman stressed that the Commission's advice was to be given only at the request of the Minister. If that is the intention, why not let that appear in the Bill? There could be no harm in doing so. It would save a lot of misunderstanding. It would, in certain circumstances, prevent the Commission from appearing to become busybodies, and it would avoid getting the wires crossed. This expression is one which the hon. Gentleman came to understand quite well in Committee. I explained at some length what I meant, and there is no need to go over it all again—unless there is any hon. Gentleman who was not on the Committee and


who wishes to hear about it, in which case I can, of course, repeat the speech which I made then. I think, however, that hon. Members would prefer me not to do so. The wires could quite easily become crossed, because the Departments have their own responsibilities for law reform, and exceedingly expert facilities for carrying it out. Surely it must be only when the Department requests advice—or assistance, if the Government do not accept advice, which would surprise me—that this should happen.
1.15 a.m.
That brings me to the third Amendment, and here we are up against a very strange situation. I do not blame the Minister without Portfolio for having left the Chamber, as he has been here continuously for about three hours, but it is perhaps a little unfortunate that he is unable to hear what I have to say. He said this evening that he would be shocked if a High Court judge were to assume executive functions in Whitehall, but—

Mr. Cyril Bence: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. I understand that during the Committee stage, these very Amendments were tabled, were discussed, were voted upon and were defeated. Why is it that, at a quarter past one in the morning, we have to have these same arguments gone over again after the Committee proceedings on Amendments which were discussed, voted upon and rejected? Why are these brought here again on Report? The right hon. and learned Gentleman is moving these Amendments in the very words used during Committee stage. Is that in order?

Sir Knox Cunningham: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. Am I to understand that if people who were not on that Committee would like to hear how the wires were crossed they cannot hear it? I understood that my right hon. and learned Friend was quite willing to give an explanation, and I should certainly like to hear it.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: The point which the hon. and learned Gentleman has just raised is not a point of order at all, as he must know. In answer to the first point of order, the hon. Gentleman ought to know by now that the selection of Amendments, both in Committee and on

Report, is announced by the Chair, and cannot be questioned.

Sir D. Renton: I hope that it is in order for me to add that these Amendments were not moved in Committee. What was moved in Committee was an Amendment to leave out paragraph (e) of Clause 3(1).
I had just come to the third of the three Amendments, which is to leave out from "departments" to the end of line 4. The reason that I moved that Amendment was that the explanation which the hon. Gentleman gave in Standing Committee as to the Government's intentions revealed a most extraordinary situation.
This is of course a very broad phrase,
other authorities or bodies concerned with proposals",
and I agree that there is a narrowing of the possibilities for other authorities or bodies expecting assistance from the Commission, because it can be given only at the request of the Minister.
It would seem, we find, that in the first place it is a free service to be given. We have had no clear indication of the circumstances in which the expenditure of public money would be thought to be justified. We find the Under-Secretary suggesting that Standing Committees and Select Committees of this House could be given the advice. I have no doubt that he said that after consultation with his right hon. and hon. Friends, but it is an entirely new constitutional departure that a Commission presided over by a High Court judge, even if he is in suspended animation as a judge, he nevertheless retains, as we understand it, his position as a judge—should be drawn into the political arena to the extent of giving advice to Standing Committees of the House. One wonders exactly how that advice is to be given. Will it be given during the Committee proceedings? Will the Committee adjourn in order that the advice can be obtained? What is to be the position?
We are entitled to know a little more about the Government's intention in regard to Select Committees, too, because Select Committees already have very fine, expert and experienced advice from such people as Counsel to Mr. Speaker and from the Officers of the House, including the Clerks at the Table, who are very often themselves lawyers. So there


is a most puzzling situation. The worst part of it is adding to the strange position that I have already referred to of a High Court judge becoming involved in executive functions in Whitehall, that of a High Court judge becoming involved in the political arena in the work of a Standing Committee.
The situation is even more complex than I have described, and in a sense even more strange. Again I have to rely on the speech made by the Under-Secretary in reply to the debate. It is perfectly in order for me to do so. We are seriously worried about this, and are entitled to explanations. The hon. Gentleman said that the Commission in each country will be a legal body of some expertise, particularly in Commonwealth and foreign law, and it may become an agency so highly respected in the country that many people will wish to have its assistance from time to time.
I think that in saying that the hon. Gentleman probably overlooked that in subsection (1,e) we are dealing not merely with the receiving and considering of proposals for reform, preparing and submitting programmes to the Minister, the examination of particular branches of the law, or the preparation of comprehensive programmes of consolidation and statute law revision. We are dealing with what seems to be, in the rather vague proposals contained in paragraph (e), something approaching the climax of the Commission's functions in relation to any branch of the law, and we find that there is a sort of mulberry bush that will come into existence. What will happen so far as one can tell is that a body which is not a legislative body will apply to the Minister for advice on the reform of a branch of the law which it has no responsibility to reform. The Minister will then consider whether the matter should be referred to the Law Commission.
It must, presumably, be a matter within his responsibility, because any branch of the law eventually comes within the responsibility of the Minister. The Minister then considers whether to allow the Commission to provide assistance to that body which has approached him. We will assume that the Minister says "Yes" and requests the Commission to do so. The Commission then considers

what the proposals for the reform of the law should be. Then it goes back to the Minister again, and then presumably in order that the matter can be fitted into the Commission's comprehensive programme it has to go back to the Commission again. Then it will form part of the legislative programme, but only after going back to the Minister once more.
So we have a strange sort of mulberry bush process. It is quite unnecessarily circuitous. It is no improvement whatever on the methods which are well-tried and well adopted and which lead to a great deal of law reform at present.
We suggest seriously to the Government that, rather than have all this uncertainty, all these constitutional snags that I have pointed out, it would be far better to cut out the last part of paragraph (e) altogether. That is why, therefore, we have moved this third Amendment.
These Amendments are not put down just for the sake of moving Amendments. They are, I think, the most important Amendments to the Bill. They are the Amendments that have caused the most anxiety of all, I know, among my hon. Friend's on this side of the House. There are hon. Gentlemen who are very much in favour of the Bill who feel doubts about this paragraph (e), as to whether what is contained in it may not undo a good deal of the good which, from their point of view, is contained in the Bill.
I think it is most regrettable that we should have to discuss a matter of such importance at such an hour of the night, but there it is—we have had this forced upon us. I hope that we shall get a very much more lucid answer than we have had before.

Notice taken that 40 Members were not present;

House counted, and, 40 Members being present—

1.30 a.m.

Dr. Dickson Mabon: In the absence of further comment from hon. Gentlemen opposite, who are so concerned about this matter, and since my task is made so much easier by the fact that virtually all my speech in Committee has been quoted tonight—with, perhaps, one distinctive exception; a section of it which explained


the whole matter—I will try to deal with the three Amendments, which are almost a rehearsal of the efforts made by hon. Gentlemen opposite in Committee to have the Clause deleted.
If it is the intention of the Opposition to welcome the Bill, then the Government deeply regret the lack of some imagination on the part of hon. Gentlemen opposite to see how the Law Commission will work. The right hon. Gentleman made much play of my use of the word "advice"—which, incidentally, I used largely at the behest of the hon. Member for Hendon, South (Sir H. Lucas-Tooth) who, I regret, is not with us tonight. I tried to explain to him then that it was clear that the word "assistance" could mean advice and information, and that for the sake of the Statute the word "assistance" was much better.
I pointed out that while the word "advice" was a much more positive term than "assistance" it would not reflect the true intention of the commissioners from the point of view of Government Departments. The commissioners might, for example, discharge their duties under the Bill as it stands by providing a Deparment with factual information on foreign law. They might not feel inclined to do any more than provide the factual information; and therefore it was the Government view that to put the word "advice" in the Statute would impose a positive duty on the commissioners which they might not be able to discharge.
On the other hand, the word "assistance" does not exclude the possibility of positive advice as well as information, and it is fair to say that its interpretation could be left perhaps more imaginatively than if we accepted "advice" as being a positive suggestion—

Sir D. Renton: Would the hon. Gentleman agree that by the Commission giving assistance to Government Departments that involves the carrying out of executive functions?

Dr. Mabon: No. I do not think so because the Bill is read as a whole one sees the Commission in the context of its responsibilities to the Lord Chancellor, the Secretary of State and the Lord Advocate. One sees that essentially its work is advisory in nature and that everything it

does in relation to the Clause cannot be taken to be in any other way. [Interruption.] Hon. Gentlemen opposite do not agree, but they will see that it does if they will only read the whole Bill and not individual parts of it and quote portions of speeches and Clauses. A reading of the whole Bill will reveal that what I have said is the intention. There is nothing sinister in this. It is perfectly clear and I am trying hard to explain the matter and this is the third attempt by Ministers to show that the word "assistance" is more desirable in relation to this matter.
We have no objection in principle to the second Amendment. It is perfectly clear and reasonable, but it does not seem to be necessary, for it is not contemplated that the Commission should force assistance on Government Departments which are not willing to accept it. The Amendment would not, therefore, serve a useful purpose and its wording—and I am sorry to say this to so many lawyers—would be unsatisfactory.
In regard to the third Amendment, some play was made about the Amendment being defeated by only one vote in Committee, but I understand from the Committee Whip that that one vote represented 100 per cent. of the Government's majority in Committee, which is not bad going in the circumstances. So I would not make too much of the result of 10 to 9 votes.
The Amendment would remove the obligation on the Commissioners to provide assistance at the request of the appropriate Minister to any authorities or bodies other than Government Departments which may be concerned with proposals for the reform or amendment of any branch of the law. It is true that this was criticised by the hon. Member for Hendon, South and others. It was suggested that it would be quite wrong to put the Commission under a duty, even at the request of a Minister, to provide assistance to local authorities, professional bodies like the Law Society and the Institute of Chartered Accountants or, as suggested by the hon. Member for Hendon, South, the Band of Hope or the Brewers' Society.
It is of course in the highest degree unlikely that any Minister would ever ask the Commission to give assistance


to bodies of that kind, but it might well be that bodies outside Government Departments with official responsibility for considering the reform of the law might reasonably look to the Commission for advice, for example a Royal Commission or, as has been said, a Select Committee of either House of Parliament. It seems to us perfectly reasonable that the Commission may be found to be a desirable body of advisers on particular matters.
The reference in Standing Committee, which I acknowledge, was made by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Liverpool, Edge Hill (Mr. A. J. Irvine) who suggested that it would have been useful to have the assistance of the Law Commission, if it had existed, for example, in the discussion of the Measure dealing with hire purchase. It would have been useful to obtain the advice of the Commission on certain Amendments to that Bill relating to "the true measure of damages." Those who took part in discussions on that Measure can have some sympathy for the idea that the Law Commission should not be excluded completely.
I admit that this is a novel suggestion, imaginative and a little revolutionary for hon. Members opposite more content with the conservative machinery of this largely Victorian-based Parliament, but this is a radical Government intent on doing things and doing them well. It is only right that we should try to envisage a Commission which can do a great deal more than the simplified reform of the law which hon. Members opposite wanted it to achieve. Therefore, I strongly advise the House to resist the Amendment.

Mr. Percival: I am sure that the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland is very sincere when he tries hard to explain what he means. I am sure that he will give us credit for sincerity in trying hard to understand what he means and that he does not mind our pursuing the matter. He looks very fresh and we feel very fresh and this is the opportunity for clearing these matters up. I am sure that those who do not understand them will be patient while we endeavour to do so.
I understand that the hon. Gentleman's argument for rejecting "advice" for "assistance" is that the Commission might only want to give information, and not advice and that if paragraph (e) contained the word "advice" the Commission might be obliged to give advice when it only wanted to give information. But "assistance" included information and advice. Has not the hon. Gentleman therefore hoist himself with his own petard?
If assistance means both information and advice, the duty cast upon the Commission is to give both, and it has no right to limit itself to information. Moreover, while I can see that the word "assistance" may include information and advice, I have yet to hear any proposition which limits it to either information or advice or to information and advice. Assistance means something more than both put together. If the hon. Gentleman agrees with my proposition—one of us must be wrong here—it pulls the rug out from under his own argument because, if the word "assistance" remains, the commissioners could not limit themselves to information.
The Under-Secretary said that the paragraph must be read in the context of the whole Bill, that context being that the Commission is to act in an advisory capacity. Again, he is hoist with his own petard because, in that context, one cannot possibly limit the word "assistance" to information and exclude advice. It is putting far too narrow a limit on it to say that one can read the whole Bill as limiting the activities and duties of the Commission to an advisory capacity. This is supposed to be the Clause defining its duties. I doubt that it is a proposition which would stand up in any court of law that one could look at the whole Bill and say that the Commission was to be advisory only and then cut down the clear words of paragraph (e) to a meaning which limits it to the giving of advice.
I hope that the Government will consider seriously what I am saying and not pigeon-hole it as some of the ideas referred to earlier may be quickly pigeonholed. It is necessary to consider what else may be included in the word "assistance" in addition to information and advice. A Government Department


may want to have assistance in the drafting of a constitution for a new colony. There is nothing in the words here to limit the duty of the Commission if it were asked for assistance in such drafting. A Government Department engaged in litigation, having instructed counsel and having acted in the courts directly, might welcome assistance in that litigation. There is nothing in the words of the paragraph to limit assistance so as to exclude that kind of assistance. One can think of many more examples. [An HON. MEMBER: "Tell us."] The hon. Gentleman should not invite me to take up too much time. if his inquiry is serious, I can give him a dozen examples in writing afterwards.
There is another aspect of the matter which I ask the Government to consider and let us have their view on this evening. [An HON. MEMBER: "This morning."] Who is counting the time? We are not. The Under-Secretary said that assistance is better than advice because it includes information and advice. I hope to have an answer to my question as to why it is not wider and does not inlude other matters, but let us assume for the moment that it includes information and advice.
1.45 a.m.
I should like a more satisfactory answer than the bare statement that this does not involve trespass on the functions of the Executive. At the moment the officers of the Executive charged with the duty to give advice to Government Departments are not the Lard Chancellor but the Law Officers of the Crown. Suppose, at their own request, a Government Department receive advice from the Commission under paragraph (e). Provided that it was the same advice as that given by the Law Officers, no great harm might be done, but it is hardly worth contemplating who would sort out the tangle if the Department received one lot of advice from the Law Officers, the members of the Executive charged with the duty of advising them, and different advice from the Law Commission. There is a means provided as part of the constitution for the giving of advice to Government Departments.
I hope that we shall be told why it is thought necessary to charge the Commissioners with the duty to give advice if

asked, and how it can be said that if the Commission may be asked by a Government to give advice which it is the constitutional duty of the Law Officers to give, that does not involve a trespass on the duties of the executive.

Sir Knox Cunningham: I had not intended to weary the House and would not have done so but for some of the points which the Minister made. I should like to ask him about them.
We say that by using the word "advice" we use a word which is known and clear but that to give "assistance" goes much further. I ask the Minister whether "assistance" does not include executive responsibility. One of the functions being laid on the Commissioners by the Bill is to give "assistance." The Minister said that that word was preferable, but does he intend to widen the functions to include executive functions? If he does, he should be able to define the other functions which he has in mind.
He says that we should consider the Bill as a whole, but we are dealing with it Amendment by Amendment, Clause by Clause. I want to see advice provided to Government Departments, for that is clear and limited. I support the Amendment which deletes the word "assistance" in the phrase,
to provide assistance to government departments and, at the request of the Minister, to other authorities or bodies concerned wih proposals for the reform or amendment of any branch of the law…
At the moment, as I understand it, the Minister can request—and the Commission must do so if he so requests—that assistance shall be given to other authorities or bodies. What sort of authorities? What sort of bodies? Let us not forget that this is a duty laid on the Commission to give this assistance if so requested by the Minister, so I prefer that the Minister should accept these two Amendments. I have little hope that he will accept the second, but I should have thought that he could have accepted the substitution of "advice" for "assistance." It would certainly make for clarity, and would be an improvement to this Clause.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: I do not want to delay the House beyond anything but the minimum period, but I should like to associate myself, formally, with this Amendment and to say that I agree with my right hon. and learned Friend the


Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton). This raises a point of major constitutional importance, and it would be useless for me to attempt to improve upon the argument which he has so brilliantly, so lucidly—[AN HON. MEMBER: "So succinctly".]—deployed. I merely want to say that, in the substance of his point, and in the deployment of his argument, he has my fullest support.

Sir D. Renton: I hope that the Under-Secretary will not mind my saying that his reply to this point was a great letdown. It was not a serious answer to the serious point which we on this side of the House made, but a partial and brief answer to some of the argument.
I would quickly summarise the position that we have reached. It is very difficult for the Minister without Portfolio not to feel anxiety about a duty which places upon the Commission the giving of assistance to that Commission. One cannot get away from the fact that that must involve a degree of executive function. The wording of the Bill is so perfectly plain. It is clearly stated,
It shall be the duty of each of the Commissions…to provide assistance to government departments…
There is no question of requesting. The word "assistance" is admitted to be a wide word, and there must be a risk of the wise principle which he laid down earlier this evening of the independence of the judiciary being infringed if the word "assistance" is kept in the Bill.
What the Government really contemplate is that the Commission should give information and advice. I would have thought that it would have been a sensible thing—not a generous thing, because we are not asking the Minister to be generous—to have said that he will ask the Lord Chancellor to consider meeting at least in spirit the anxiety expressed about this Clause; and to say that he would inquire whether "advice" would not be better than "assistance" and, at the same time, as he says there is no objection in principle to our second Amendment although he does not like the wording of it, satisfy our hope that a shorter one may be introduced in principle in another place.
Indeed, simply to insert the words "on request" might well meet the point of principle and I cannot imagine that it

would do any harm to the Bill. It would certainly do something to allay our anxieties and, incidentally, do something to meet the point of constitutional principle which the hon. Gentleman mentioned when he said he would be shocked if a High Court judge were to assume executive functions in Whitehall.
The brief reply on the third Amendment was a plain denial without reasons of the argument we put forward. As my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr. St. John-Stevas) and others have mentioned, there has been no reply by the Government to the serious point made about Standing Committees. There has been no reply as to how the Commission's advice is to be given to them. We were told in Committee that the position of the Law Officers would not be affected but now it seems there is to be duplication of their work. No reason has been given for that. The same can be said about the work of the Select Committees, which are already so well served. [Interruption.] I do not know whether the hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. Bence), who sits making a running mumble of incoherent commentary, wishes to intervene. If he does, I will give way.

Mr. Bence: We have heard the same sort of patter for the last hour. I wonder whether the right hon. and learned Gentleman really believes what he is saying. His hon. Friends do not. They are having a laugh, as we are.

The Deputy-Speaker: Order. Whether we have heard the same argument for the last hour or not, it is not in order for an hon. Member to make interjections while seated.

Sir D. Renton: It is a great pity that, when his own Government have introduced a Bill to which they attach great importance, as do most of us on this side, the hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, East does not rise to a serious study of the matter.
We have had no reply—not even a mention or a comment—on the way in which the Commission's free advice service to other authorities or bodies is to operate. Again, there is no limit to that except that it can be done only at the request of a Minister. We have not been told of the circumstances in which public money will be spent in giving that advice or about the responsibility for it. It is


really most regrettable that, when we stress that this is the part of the Bill on which we feel most anxiety, we should have had so little assistance from the Government in helping us to understand their views and so little consideration by the Government of the constitutional principles involved.

2.0 p.m.

Sir Eric Fletcher: I do not accept any of those remonstrances because the right hon. and learned Gentleman must know, on reflection, that, on every single Amendment in Committee and on Report so far, we have endeavoured to give all the information and all the explanations asked for. All the points he has made can be answered quite shortly on these three Amendments. I will deal with the last Amendment first—the one that suggests that all the words after "departments" should be omitted.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman talks about their service and who is to be responsible for it. Surely he has observed, that this assistance can be given to outside bodies only at the request of the Minister, and therefore the Minister will be responsible. He will be responsible to Parliament and can be questioned as to whether he has authorised the Law Commission to provide assistance to bodies other than Government Departments. He will be accountable to Parliament and we desire that he should be. We think that occasions will arise in which the Minister in his discretion will find it necessary and sensible to get the Law Commissioners to give such assistance. Therefore there is no point in that Amendment and I ask my hon. Friends to resist it.
The Under-Secretary pointed out that the second Amendment was otiose because it was unnecessary. If it would assist the right hon. and learned Gentleman I am prepared to suggest to my noble and learned Friend that in another place the words "on request" should be introduced to precede the words at the beginning of line 1, paragraph (e). It is obvious that the Law Commissioners are not going to provide assistance unless requested, but if it would help the words "on request" can be inserted.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman and some of his hon. Friends raised a point which they have called a constitutional

issue and have suggested that the word "assistance" should be changed to "advice". There is not a shred of merit in this so called constitutional point. Whether the word "assistance" or the word "advice" is used, the constitutional point is precisely the same.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman quoted, I think inaccurately, something I said at an earlier stage about a possible conflict between a member of the judiciary who was seconded to the Law Commission and his judicial function. I again remind him that this was equally a constitutional problem which arose only on the assumption, right or wrong, that a High Court judge will be appointed to the Commission and will be Chairman. Otherwise, there is no constitutional point.
Again, this suggestion of some infringement of the constitution is far-fetched. That is why it is provided that a High Court judge who serves on the Commission will cease to perform any judicial function and for the time being will not exercise the functions of a judge, as in the case of Lord Reading who was seconded from the Bench to undertake a purely political appointment as Ambassador in Washington and who then returned to the Bench. This is a perfect precedent and a much more serious one, as that was a purely executive function and this will be a purely advisory one.
It is because we want to make a clear demarcation between the judicial function and the non-judicial function, and because we think it valuable to have a judge on the Commission and because we have made this carefully balanced provision, that I hope that the House will resist this Amendment.

Amendment negatived.

Mr. Speaker: The next Amendment selected is Amendment No. 13.

Sir D. Renton: We were discussing Amendments No. 11 and No. 12 with Amendment No. 10. In view of the undertaking given about Amendment No. 11, I wonder wheher it would be correct for me to move that Amendment and then to withdraw it?

Mr. Speaker: I have not heard the debate, but the point is that I selected Amendment No. 10 and suggested that


there might be discussed with it Amendments Nos. 11 and 12, which does not leave opportunity for the step that the right hon. and learned Gentleman proposes. No doubt, all that has been said will be a matter of record as something to be further considered.

Sir Eric Fletcher: I beg to move Amendment No. 13, in page 3, line 7, at the end, to insert:
(1A) The Minister shall lay before Parliament any programmes prepared by the Commission and approved by him and any proposals for reform formulated by the Commission pursuant to such programmes.

Mr. Speaker: I suggest that with this Amendment we discuss also the following Amendments, if that course appears to be right:

Amendment No. 14, in line 12, leave out subsection (3);

Amendment No. 15, in line 13, leave out "and approved by him";

Amendment No. 16, in line 15, at end insert:
as are approved and shall inform Parliament of any programmes or parts of programmes prepared by the Commissioner but not approved by him".

Sir J. Hobson: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Amendments Nos. 13 and 14 are only to transpose subsection (3) and make it follow subsection (1), because Amendment No. 13 is in the precise form of the existing subsection (3). Amendment No. 16 was intended as an Amendment to subsection (3). If that subsection is deleted and inserted, as proposed, earlier in the Clause, will it be possible to amend it as proposed in Amendments Nos. 15 or 16, or, if Amendment No. 14 is passed, must Nos. 15 and 16 automatically fall?

Mr. Speaker: I must call the Government Amendments No. 13 and 14; I have no choice. Supposing them to be accepted, Amendment No. 16 will fall. That is the inevitable consequence. All that I can do, therefore, is the method which I propose. I do not know what view the House will take about the Government Amendment, but what follow will necessarily be governed by that.

Sir E. Fletcher: Amendment No. 13 gives effect to an undertaking which I gave in Committee to reverse the order of subsections (2) and (3). The hon.

Baronet the Member for Hendon, South (Sir H. Lucas-Tooth), with his usual acumen, pointed out that it would be preferable to reverse their order. We accepted his persuasive argument on the subject and I undertook to adopt it. That is why the Amendment is put down, and I hope that the House will adopt it.

Sir J. Hobson: I am grateful to the Government for accepting the suggestion of my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon, South (Sir H. Lucas-Tooth). In the circumstances, however, as the Notice Paper now stands, we hope that they will make this Amendment in another place. The transposition of subsection (3) is only a matter of detail. I hope that the Government will tonight accept either Amendment No. 15 or Amendment No. 16 to subsection (3), and when the Bill has been thus improved they can change the order in another place. The order in which the subsections appear is, of course, important, but it is not difficult to adjust in another place when we see what has become of it as a result of the activities of this House.
I can deal shortly with Amendments Nos. 15 and 16. My hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr. St. John-Stevas) put down the former. No. 16 is in a different form. I do not mind particularly which of the two forms of Amendment is adopted, because they both have precisely the same purpose of ensuring not only that either the Lord Chancellor or the Secretary of State, according to which Commission has made a recommendation to him, reports to the House of Commons what has been approved in that recommendation, but that it is perfectly plain to the House, and thereby to the public, what recommendations he has not approved.
It is surely a necessary part of the proper functioning of the Commissioners that the extent to which their proposals have or have not been accepted and approved by either the Lord Chancellor or the Secretary of State for Scotland should be known. The members of the Law Commission, particularly if headed by a High Court judge, might attract blame if, though they were to make recommendations, they were not approved by the Lord Chancellor and were not, therefore, conveyed to the House of Commons—when in fact the


Commissioners had made such recommendations.
It might be asked, "Why have not the Commissioners dealt with this or that or the other topic?", because, as the Bill stands at present, what will appear to have been done will be only what the Lord Chancellor has approved. I should have thought, that it was of vital importance that one should keep completely clear, in a formal recommendation made to the Lord Chancellor or the Secretary of State, and whether approved or not, the differences between the parts approved and the parts not approved by the Lord Chancellor.
As at present drafted the Bill provides that only so much of a recommendation as is approved should be laid before Parliament, and while there may be, at a later stage, perhaps up to two years afterwards, an opportunity, upon the annual report of the Commissioners, to deal with something recommended and not approved the position might remain in obscurity for a considerable time, if not in perpetuity, if it should not be mentioned in the annual report of the Commissioners.
As I say, we feel that it is of considerable importance that the House and the public should know not merely what has been approved but what has been recommended and not approved. I realise that this might be a matter which might embarrass the Government, and I say it with my eyes open, for I hope that shortly we on this side shall be on the other side of the fence, and we might have a recommendation which would be embarrassing to us as a Government, a recommendation which was not approved and not laid before the House, as the Bill stands. But one has to approach the Bill knowing that it will apply to any Government. I should not have thought it a right principle that the formal recommendations of the Commission should be segregated, that only those parts which are approved by the Lord Chancellor or the Secretary of State should be laid before Parliament, but that those which are disapproved should also and equally be laid before Parliament. That is the purpose of Amendments Nos. 15 and 16, and I care not in which form the Amendment be accepted.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: I consider these Amendments, either of them or both, extremely important and relevant. I speak as a staunch supporter of the Bill as such. I welcome it as the only worthwhile piece of legislation we have yet had from the Government and perhaps are likely to have. This is a serious Amendment. It is not a wrecking Amendment in any way.
The Commission, I hope, will do most important work, and I hope that it will be asked to report on not only lawyers' law but on other fields of the law where controversy may rage. There may well be such questions as reform of the divorce laws, the reform of the Sexual Offences Act, the reform of the law of arrest, the question of classification of offences. All these are possible subjects which might well come before the Commissioners. It might well be thought by the Government of the day that it would be politically expedient not to publish their recommendations. If this situation were allowed to arise, then the work of the commissioners would be largely wasted.
I think that, in this sphere of influencing opinion, publication is just as important as legislation, the more so as, for all we know, with a great number of recommendations produced by the Commissioners, there may not be immediate legislative time available. Therefore, the publication of these reports and their recommendations and proposals for reform have a most important part to play in educating public opinion and in forming law-making opinion. Nothing would be more useful than to have, to study and to consider, well in advance of actual legislation, proposals which would be considered to be proposals taken after months of work—perhaps, in some cases, year of work —by the Commissioners.
2.15 a.m.
I know that there is provision in the Bill, in Clause 3(2), for an annual report to be laid before Parliament. There will doubtless be an allusion in that report to the activities of the Commission, but there is no guarantee that a full report of its labours in any respect will be included and will be published. I therefore hope that, for the reasons which I have given, the Government will sympathetically consider this Amendment or its alternative. because I think that its acceptance will improve the chances of achieving the


objects of the Commission, which I and the rest of my hon. Friends enthusiastically support.

Mr. Howe: I should like to add my serious support to what has been said by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Sir J. Hobson) and by my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr. St. John-Stevas). Many of us, it is clear, welcome the Bill and welcome the arrival of a Law Commission enthusiastically, and are, to some extent, dismayed by the extent to which its rôles and its powers have been whittled away from the original conception enunciated by the Minister's noble Friend some years ago. The basis of the argument for a vigorous and dynamic and independent body to advance and reform the law rested upon the delays of between 25 and 50 years which elapsed between the formulation of generally acceptable proposals and their implementation in legislation. It is part of the Government's case that these delays will be diminished by the creation of this body, which I accept, and that they will be diminished by the allotment to a senior Minister—the Lord Chancellor—of responsibility for law reform, and that also I accept.
But I think that there is still a grave risk that without the maximum number of forces acting to generate and sustain public opinion in respect of law reform, the measures will not come forward as quickly and as readily as many of us would like. If one likes to compare the situation in which the Law Commission will find itself with other bodies, it may be useful to illustrate the point which we have in mind. The Council on Tribunals played a notable part in securing alterations of the procedure for public inquiries, the rights of objection of people not theoretically interested and the right of a Minister to take advice from other Departments. The Council was able to play that rôle only because it had direct access and was able to publish and republish its views and to mobilise public opinion against the Government, although it was the Government of my own party.
The Consumer Council give repeated support to proposals, for example, those made by the Molony Committee, concerning reform of the law. It seems to

me that anything—such as the Clause as it now stands appears to be—which diminishes the right and authority of the Commission to get its argument before the public is a pity. Hon. Members opposite must surely visualise their own reactions if this situation were to have been presented by a Government of my party.
Suppose the Law Commission had introduced proposals for reforming the law on some matter dear to the hearts of its members, such as the right of parading at Holy Loch or Trafalgar Square. Suppose the Government of the day, of whatever party, had chosen not to include those recommendations among those to go before Parliament. There would be legitimate concern about that. It is a matter of importance to those who support the cause of law reform. No doubt the annual report will say something about it, but that is late.
Many of us are disappointed in this respect, as in a number of others, at the extent to which the Law Commission falls short, above all, in its right of access to the House, of the New York Law Revision Commission, to which reference has often been made. If one looks at the powers of the New York Law Revision Commission, it is that Commission which decides in the first instance whether or not to recommend legislation. It produces a draft Bill, and along with it goes its recommendation. At that stage the Law Revision Commission carries out its own consultation with the State Bar Association as an essential part of the research process. Then the Commission presents a programme to a joint legislative hearing.
This seems to be of real importance. It accentuates the rôle of the Legislature in relation to the Commission and diminishes the rôle of the Executive. It does something to restore the authority of this House under pressure from the Commission. In the article to which reference has been made, it is said that:
the Law Revision Commission has functioned as an intermediary between the courts and the Legislature"—

Mr. Bence: Oh dear.

Mr. Howe: I am glad that the hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. Bence) has come back into the Chamber. We would miss his interventions, even if choric or somnolent in form.
I was quoting from page 15 of "The New York Law Revision Commission" by John W. MacDonald. It goes on:
investigating suggestions for changes in the law and making disinterested recommendations as to the revisions deemed necessary.
There is this direct link between the Commission and the Legislature without the opportunity for intervention of the kind that I would regard as essentially objectionable.
If one looks at the passage in the article written by the Minister's right hon. and noble Friend in 1953 about this, he there quotes from a talk by Professor Seaborne Davies about the fate of many proposals in the past for the reform of criminal law. He quotes with approval the suggestion that:
Somewhere between the Home Office and the office of the Lord Chancellor there is a large hole where projects for the reform of the substance of the criminal law are deeply interred.
1 am concerned that there should not be a hole, be it a large or a small one, between the Law Commission and the House in which proposals of programmes for the reform of the law could be interred, deeply or otherwise.
It seems to me that the original conception of the Law Commission is being to some extent altered, and although we welcome it as it stands, I should like to think that the function of the Law Commission would fulfil the aims set for it by Justice Cardozo many years ago when he said:
Legislature and courts move on in proud and silent isolation. Some agency must be found to mediate between them.
The Clause as unamended appears to me to represent an interference with direct mediation of the kind which the Law Commission is designed to fulfil.

Sir Knox Cunningham: I should like to add my voice to those of my right hon. and hon. Friends in support of these Amendments, in particular of Amendment No. 16. I want to discuss one point, the very narrow point of information.
I think that the House would want information to be given as fully as possible, not only about the matters which are approved, but also those matters in programmes which are being brought forward and which are not approved. The House should have that information. It would be useful in the working of this

particular Measure and in the working of the Commission that the House should have that information.
I give this Amendment my warm support. I hope that the Government will consider this matter. If they cannot do anything here, I hope that in another place they will put forward an Amendment to allow the information to be given as widely as possible, not only about the things approved but also about those which are not approved.

Mr. Percival: I wish to support the Amendment for perhaps a slightly different reason. We are speaking here of the information which must be given to the House relating to programmes approved or, if the Amendments were carried, not approved by the Minister.
It is a necessary starting point to see what programmes would be laid before the House if the Government Amendments stood on their own, and then to see to what extent, if any, the position would be improved by the acceptance of the Opposition Amendment. Therefore, the best starting point for the argument I want to make is Amendment No. 13, which provides that
The Minister shall lay before Parliament any programmes prepared by the Commission and approved by him…
It is necessary to look back to the earlier provisions of the Bill to see what programmes these are which would be laid before Parliament if Amendment No. 13 stood on its own, and the relevant provisions are Clause 3(1), paragraphs (b), (c) and (d). Paragraph (b) deals with the preparation and submission of
programmes for the examination of different branches of the law with a view to reform, including recommendations as to the agency (whether the Commission or another body) by which any such examination should be carried out;
Paragraph (c) continues
to undertake, pursuant to any such recommendations approved by the Minister, the examination of particular branches of the law and the formulation, by means of draft Bills or otherwise, of proposals for reform therein;
If that paragraph read
to undertake, pursuant to any such programmes approved by the Minister
then it would be possible to relate paragraph (b) directly to Amendment No. 13, because one would be able to say then that the subsection in Amendment No. 13


is relating to the programmes approved by the Minister which are referred to in paragraph (b).
This may be a mistake, but the fact is that paragraph (c) does not say programmes; it says recommendations. If the word "recommendation" had never appeared before no harm might have been done, because the word might refer to a programme. But in the preceding paragraph recommendations are referred to. It says
including recommendations as to the agency (whether the Commission or another body) by which any such examination should be carried out;
When one goes to sub-paragraph (c), the reference to
…such recommendations approved by the Minister
can only mean recommendations as to the agency by which any such examination may be carried out. So one will not find in either (b) or (c) any question of programmes approved by the Minister, One looks on to see whether in the later paragraphs there is any reference to programmes, and there is in paragraph (d). Paragraph (d) reads
to prepare comprehensive programmes of consolidation and statute law revision, and to undertake the preparation of draft Bills pursuant to any such programme approved by the Minister.
Such a programme here is a comprehensive programme of consolidation and statute law revision. Is it not a programme for the examination of different branches of the law with a view to reform. It is limited by the words of the subsection.
2.30 a.m.
One arrives at the conclusion that if the Amendment in line 7 were accepted but stood on its own, the only programmes approved by the Minister to which the Amendment could apply would be the programmes referred to in paragraph (d), which relate only to
…comprehensive programmes of consolidation and statute law revision, and to undertake the preparation of draft Bills…
That, I suggest, is so narrow that it may be a mistake. It may be that the way to cure the mistake is by amending the wording in another place and making "recommendations" to read "programmes," because one cannot help

feeling that that was intended, although it is not said.
However, the Amendment we are discussing would at least remedy the defect to the extent that it would ensure that all programmes, whether or not they came strictly within the category of programmes approved under paragraphs (b), (c) and (d) would be brought to the attention of the House. Indeed, I hope that I am in order in suggesting for the consideration of the Government that not only is it desirable, for the reasons adduced, to accept one or other of the Amendments before us, but that it is also desirable to include another Amendment for the substitution in paragraph (c) of the word "programmes" for the word "recommendations." I appreciate that that could not be done at this stage. Meanwhile, for the reasons I have given, I support the Amendment before us.

Sir Eric Fletcher: I will certainly consider the rather technical point which the hon. and learned Member for Southport (Mr. Percival) just mentioned, which has not been raised before and which is not expressly raised by the Amendment.
As has been observed, the Amendment is concerned with the simple question of whether or not, when the Law Commission makes proposals or recommendations to the Minister which are not approved by the Minister, those proposals or recommendations should be published. I fully understand and sympathise with the point of view expressed, but I hope that the hon. Member for Bebington (Mr. Howe) and the hon. Member for Chelmsford (Mr. St. John-Stevas) will not feel unduly disappointed if the Amendment is not accepted. I do not share their view that failure to accept it is any detraction from the cause of law reform, to which they are so much wedded as I and my hon. Friends are. This point has been fully considered.
The hon. Member for Bebington quoted an article by Mr. MacDonald on the activities of the New York Law Revision Commission. He was right to suggest—although I have not had a chance to verify it—that that Commission has the full right to publicise any recommendations it makes, whether or not approved by the Executive. Be it so, but one corollary of that seems to be two sentences which the hon. Member did not quote


from page 15 where first of all, it is said that
In its relation to the Legislature, the Commission has been scrupulous in its recognition of legislative supremacy.
The next sentence is:
It has sought to avoid recommendations on topics in which the primary question was one of policy rather than one of law.
It may be that it is because of this complete right of publication that the Commission has felt inhibited about making recommendations on matters which are politically sensitive. This is the point which the hon. Gentleman appreciated. He was candid enough to say that if his Amendment was accepted it might produce embarrassment to either the present or some subsequent Government, and in framing the Bill one has to look at a solution designed to secure, as we all want, the recognition of legislative supremacy and also to combine full Ministerial responsibility for all changes in the law as well as a sufficient degree of independence on the part of the Commission.
There will always be some branches of the law more politically sensitive than others. The Commissioners may want to make recommendations about them and they will be able to do so. They may want to include them as a high priority in the programme. They may be unacceptable to the Government of the day for various reasons and it is right that the Government should have the last word in deciding whether proposals of a politically sensitive kind should be brought forward, or be brought forward with any degree of priority.
It does not follow that it is right that recommendations if not approved by the Minister should always necessarily be communicated to Parliament. I am not arguing that it is clearly wrong that they should be. Nor could it be argued that it is clearly right. It is an arguable hypothesis. Therefore, we think that we have reached a fair balance by providing two things. The first is that only programmes approved by the Minister should be reported as a matter of course to Parliament. But in addition, by the other paragraphs, we give the Commissioners an absolute right to make an annual report which shall be laid before Parliament, and they are entirely free to put in that report for publication anything they like, including if they so desire the fact that

they have produced certain recommendations which have not been approved by the Minister. Whether they will do that I cannot say.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: Would they be entitled to put into the report proposals in full which had not been accepted by the Minister?

Sir Eric Fletcher: The words of the Clause are that they
shall make an annual report to the Minister on their proceedings, and the Minister shall lay the report before Parliament…
There is no restriction on their right to put anything they want into the annual report, and if they put it in the Minister has to lay it before Parliament. The answer to the hon. Gentleman is that it must reside in the good sense and discretion of the Commissioners what they should report. If they felt strongly about something which they wanted to bring to the knowledge of the House and the public they would be entitled to refer to it, either in general or in detail—I do not know. But there it is. There is a certain element of safeguard for the House and the public in that paragraph which we regard as consistent with the preservation both of Ministerial responsibility and the ultimate sovereignty of Parliament.

Mr. Howe: I am grateful to the Minister for the care and patience with which he has, at this hour of the morning, explained a difficult and important point. I suggest for his consideration and that of his noble Friend that there is still this distinction. Under the earlier paragraphs of subsection (1), the Minister has power to approve or disapprove the programmes on which the Commission proposes to embark, so that the executive responsibility for embarkation is clearly provided for.
Is it not worth reconsidering the proposition that the Commission should be entitled to lay before the House charts of the route over which it would like to embark? It is at that point that the House and the public generally would like to be able to question the Minister's decision, right or wrong, to exclude this subject or that, for whatever reason. If the hon. Gentleman could give an assurance that the matter will be reconsidered in another place, I am sure that the House would be grateful.

Mr. Speaker: I had not called the hon. Gentleman. I thought that it was an intervention in the speech of the Minister. Otherwise, I do not know what it was. Sir John Hobson.

Sir J. Hobson: I should like to add to what has been said, whether properly or not, because this is a matter which calls for a good deal of consideration. Let us suppose that the present Government fell and that the next Lord Chancellor made a programme which went on for a considerable period. If the hon. Gentleman got back into power a second time, is the Law Commission stuck with that programme, and could not the hon. Gentleman, on his return to office, perhaps after 13 years, alter it?
He says that the Government would take control of any recommendations made, and ought to do so. I think he is not quite right here. As I read subsection (3) as it stands, once a programme is laid down, any proposal for reform formulated by the Commission pursuant to it has to be laid before Parliament, and the Government have no control at all, however objectionable the proposal might be to them. My Amendment would turn it the other way and make it essential that a programme should be laid before Parliament, whether approved or not, but the Government should be under an obligation only to lay before Parliament recommendations for reform which had been approved.
My hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr. St. John-Stevas) wants all of it, the programme and the recommendations, whether approved or not, to be laid before Parliament, and I think there is great force in the way he put his case. A good deal of consideration must be given to the exact position of the programme, whether it is approved, to the recommendations, to what happens on changes of Government when the outgoing Government have already approved a programme which may then not be acceptable to the following Government, and to the facts and circumstances which should be laid before the House by responsible Ministers. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will undertake that all these matters will be reconsidered before the Bill is brought to another place.

Amendment agreed to.

Further Amendment made: In page 3, line 12, leave out subsection (3).—[Sir Eric Fletcher.]

Sir Knox Cunningham: Mr. Speaker, may I draw your attention to the fact that not 40 Members are present?

Mr. Speaker: I understand that there was a count about half an hour ago. I do not accept notice now.

Mr. Norman Dodds: The country should know just what is going on.

Clause 5.—(STAFF AND EXPENSES.)

2.45 a.m.

Sir J. Hobson: I beg to move Amendment No. 17, in page 3, line 45, at the end to insert:
Provided that no person shall be so appointed who is or who is intended to perform the functions of a Parliamentary counsel or draftsman.
I heard the hon. Member for Erith and Crayford (Mr. Dodds) say that the country should know what is going on. What is going on is the discussion late at night, at the instance of the Government Whips, of a very important Bill. On business last week we asked whether it was right to take the Bill at this hour, and we understood that the debate would proceed for only a reasonable time of two hours or so. We have not objected to continuing the consideration of the Bill, for the Government's convenience. This is an important Bill, and every Amendment moved has been important. When the Bill is being sensibly discussed it is not right that it should be objected to, seated, by an hon. Member. If he does not like sitting at this late hour, he should go home.

Mr. Speaker: Order. Let us not be deflected by interventions. The right hon. and learned Gentleman should speak to the Amendment.

Sir J. Hobson: The object of the Amendment is to secure that the rare and valuable skills of Parliamentary draftsmen and Parliamentary counsel are not dispersed but are kept together as a team and that they should be part of that team throughout their activities. They are highly skilled individuals who are difficult to find and take a long, time to train. There is no doubt that


the Law Commissions will need skilled help from Parliamentary draftsmen in proposing Bills, and the Amendment was put down to ensure that this particular skill is not dispersed.
It will be possible for Parliamentary counsel and draftsmen to be attached to the Law Commissioners but still remain part of the team of Parliamentary counsel. There is a great deal of co-ordination to be done in the work of Parliamentary counsel; there is not only the Government's demands on them but there will still be in existence the Statute Law Revision Committee, probably the existing Law Reform Committee and the Home Secretary's Criminal Law Reform Committee, and all these will require the services of Parliamentary counsel. It must be part of the Government's duties, and of the Treasury in particular, to see what use is made of these important and rare, skilful individuals.
Because it was felt that the Government should keep control in that way, the Amendment was put down to see that we do not send to the Law Commissioners a number of these gentlemen and that the Law Commissioners do not become a factory which begins producing on its own, with a different mystique and different skill, and by different methods, Bills which might be in a different form from those which would be prepared by Parliamentary counsel as part of a team.
It may be a small point, but it is nevertheless important. We must see that this new machinery does not disturb the arrangements which we already have from Parliamentary counsel and the way in which Bills are drafted and brought before the House. I hope that the Government will accept the Amendment which deals with one of the acknowledged bottlenecks in all law reform—the provision of Parliamentary counsel. I hope that the Minister will give some indication of how the Government see the relationship between the Law Commissions and Parliamentary counsel, bearing in mind that it will be possible for one Parliamentary counsel to be attached to a Law Commission—but attached only.

Sir Eric Fletcher: The right hon. and learned Gentleman was quite right to raise this important point, but I cannot

invite the House to accept the Amendment. I am sure he will appreciate that the Amendment is really inconsistent with the duties of the Commission under Clause 3(1,d), where one of the specific duties is to
…undertake the preparation of draft Bills pursuant to any such programme approved by the Minister
and the Commissioners will want some Parliamentary draftsmen to fulfil these duties.
While I cannot accept the Amendment, I agree that this is an important matter and assure the right hon. and learned Gentleman that it has had the most careful attention of the Lord Chancellor. My right hon. and noble Friend appreciates, as must a member of any Government, the importance of conserving and making the best use of the limited number of Parliamentary counsel and their skill, and of Parliamentary draftsmen, and the importance of keeping them together as a team.
In parenthesis, I do accept that always, in every branch of the law there must be one, and only one mystique of Parliamentary draftsmanship, but I would point out that even at present some three or four of the total number of Parliamentary draftsmen, limited though their number is, are always engaged in the work of consolidation. That is, not always the same persons, but the same number, and we are very conscious of the great importance of preserving the homogeneity of the team of Parliamentary counsel, whether engaged on work emanating from the Law Commission or on the ordinary work of legislation on which they are now engaged.
Although it is often said that this is a bottleneck, my own opinion is that the talk of the bottleneck has been considerably exaggerated. We are satisfied that we shall be able to recruit the necessary number of Parliamentary draftsmen to carry out at least the English duties expected of them.

Sir J. Hobson: The Minister says that the existing team circulates in being attached to the present Statute Law Revision Committee, and other bodies. This is what I envisaged—namely, that they would be attached, but would circulate as Parliamentary counsel, and not be directly employed as members of the staff


of the Commission. That was the only purpose of my Amendment. If the Government are thinking along those lines, I should be glad to hear.

Sir E. Fletcher: This is really a Treasury point and it depends on whose Vote they come under. While I do not claim to know the final answer, the point is that the team will be kept together.

Sir Knox Cunningham: Would the Minister go just a little further and say that, in fact, this team will be kept together and seconded to the Commission where necessary? This may seem a small point. I agree that Amendment No. 17 may not be suitable, but so long as the Minister will give the undertaking that this will be done, perhaps in another place, and since he has referred to Clause 3 (1, d), it will go a long way towards meeting us if he will agree that this small, but important, matter will be studied.

Amendment negatived.

Bill read the Third time and passed.

SCOTLAND (LIVINGSTON NEW TOWN CONTRACTOR)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn—[Mr. McCann.]

2.56 a.m.

Mr. Tam Dalyell: The bulb from which this debate grows is simple to identify. It is the office block, the potential nerve centre of Livingston new town that was scheduled as late as the summer of 1963 for completion in spring, 1964. It does not look like being finished until late autumn, 1965. Coupled to this is the gross delay in the building of houses on the Livingston station site. These delays have injured the embryo new town during pregnancy.
My view is that, had the office block been ready on reasonable schedule, much ill-feeling among the architects would have been avoided and the situation would not have developed where a chief architect felt obliged to resign. The move from the Scotsman offices to Melville Street has had an unsettling effect on staff. Had the homes by Livingston station been ready, many key personnel

would not have had to travel from as far away as Dundee and Glenrothes, to the detriment of work on the site, and perhaps some of the 14 key personnel on the staff who have left the corporation since Peter Daniel's exit would have remained.
Perhaps the picture is best seen in human terms. An architect or engineer applies successfully for a post there. He is promised a house on a particular date. He sells his present home or leases it and his furniture is packed away. Then the move is delayed. Frantic arrangements are made and his wife and children have to go to live with mother-in-law. He has to travel, to find "digs", and every Friday has to tell an exasperated wife that the move has been postponed for so many weeks. Uncertainty of this kind is unsettling to domestic life and creates discontent. Good men go as a result.
Fault there is in plenty. The position cannot sensibly be seen in terms of black and white. It is more a picture of dark grey and light grey. I present my view of where each of the main participants went wrong and suggest what we can usefully learn for the future. First, there is the case of Messrs. Pert's. Here is a comparatively small firm which had a good reputation north of the Tay; but I say bluntly that it was a downright bad decision to give this under-capitalised firm the first major Livingston contract.
I have little patience with those who stay silent when an event is taking place and pour out criticism when and after it has gone wrong. The contract for Messrs. Pert's was a decision I questioned loud and clear at the time. I wrote to the right hon. Member for Argyll (Mr. Noble), who was then Secretary of State, on 24th August, 1963:
Where do Messrs. Pert propose to find the skilled joiners, at present creating a bottleneck in Central Scotland? Are they to be lured away from other firms by higher wages? If so, will this affect the original tender?
The result has been as predicted—appalling craftsmanship, slothful finishing and structural faults.
On 13th March, 1965, my wife and I visiting the incomers, witnessed, for example, a formidable crack which had developed in the wall of a house which had been occupied for three weeks. We were told of baths from which dirty


water had to be baled out because they were set at the wrong angle. My information is that towards the end of Pert's time paint was being slapped on the walls cheerfully by three sub-trained painter lads not under supervision. Certainly, the end product looked like it.
That things should come to this pass in a third generation of new towns casts a pathetic reflection on all concerned. I am aware that Pert's was ill-served by Logan's, which produced a series of faulty castings, but is not a lesson to be learned here that the main contractor must be so big that he can quickly overcome being let down by the subcontractor?
I wrote to the right hon. Member for Argyll last Thursday, saying that I would be criticising him and he replied courteously that he could not be here for obvious reasons.
The Secretary of State for Scotland has one of the most difficult jobs in the Cabinet. He has to turn his mind from the problems of marginal farms to educational Scottish joint councils and from social engagements to new towns. My complaint against the right hon. Member for Argyll is not that he did not interfere in the first place, but that after our considerable public correspondence of the autumn of 1963 he should not even have then "twigged" that he should keep an eye on Livingston. The section of the Scottish Development Department dealing with it, at June, 1964, at the latest, from the information available to it but not me, should have told him what was going on that Pert's was grinding to a halt and he should have grasped the nettle.
It is a good British tradition that we do not attack civil servants in this House. I content myself by saying that I am disenchanted by the way in which the right hon. Gentleman conducted the administration at St. Andrew's House. I ask my hon. Friend: if he had been in charge of the Scottish Development Department would he have slept while this situation at Livingston festered? Does his administration intend to take a similar passive view of the rôle of the Scottish Development Department in relation to the new towns? I believe that it will not. If it does, then I warn him that I will be equally critical of his right

hon. Friend as I have been of the right hon. Member for Argyll.
We must look a little more carefully at this aspect of the matter. I will quote from a recent television interview of the vice-chairman of the new town. Bruce Mackenzie put this question:
Would you say that the organisation for the launching of the new town was adequate?
The reply from the vice-chairman was:
No. I don't think so. I think it would be true to say that in the Scottish Development Department itself there ought to be a clearing house for ideas for the new towns, because the experience that each new town has had would be of tremendous value to the other new towns that follow after.
I am deeply shocked that there should be a third generation where advantage has not been taken of the experience of the first and second generations of new towns. Why did the board not mention some of the difficulties in the annual report? It would have been much more convincing than the propaganda. Let it treat us like adults who are capable of making a judgment and not paternally as children who should not be told. It was the board's business to smooth out difficulties among the staff and to bring about harmony.
I can only say that when it was announced in the Press that this Adjournment debate was taking place, my telephone rang so many times from callers, anonymous and otherwise, wishing to vouchsafe information, pro-Danielising and anti-Danielising, to give the feeling that there had not been such a struggle in a town since the Guelphs and Ghibbelines feuded it out in mediaeval Florence. It was an eye-opener.
Secondly, the board must bear responsibility for the bad contract to Pert's and, more seriously, for letting the building grind to a halt during Pert's death agony. Is this lack of vigour due to the average age of members of the board? I do not think that a man is too old at 64, but the composition of the board is far too venerable. Could we not have one representative of the generation whose working life will extend to the 1990s and two of the generation who will be working in 1985, when Livingston may be approaching completion?
I turn now to the chief architect. Peter Daniel is a gifted man. He has


produced an imaginative master plan. He induces deep and lasting personal loyalties. There are, however, some questions of a critical nature to be asked. Was he continually changing his mind? For example, was the decision to use or not to use blaes delayed so long that it embarrassed Pert's? A package deal is not a package deal when one party is for ever making alterations.
Did Mr. Daniel have a gay contempt for Treasury limitations—the attitude that "We are building for the future and we will consign the Treasury to the inferno"? If this is so, and if this is the chief reason for his going, then out of innocent decency the chairman is seriously at fault in not explaining this to the staff and to the public and in letting a good deal of odium settle on the general manager.
I turn to the general manager. He has displayed great energy and initiative in getting industry. It was certainly not my impression that he had an O.R. complex, as has been suggested by the Sunday Times. Is it, however, a fact that until recently each architect and each engineer could communicate with one another only by written memorandum through the chief engineer and the chief architect? Did this create a bottleneck? Was it, as an employee put it to me, that
We were so busy covering ourselves that we could not get on with the work of building the new town"?
What thought is being given to the multi-professional teams that are working so impressively at Cumbernauld?
Now, a detailed question. On 5th May, 1964, Mr. McRobb, of Pert's, gave as "realistic" completion dates for the office block and finance block the end of June, 1964, for the administration block the end of July, 1964, and for the technical block the end of September, 1964. The corporation progress officer said that this was impossible. Why did the general manager take Mr. McRobb's word, and on what basis did Mr. McRobb give the corporation £750 towards the cost of delays?
As to the future, perhaps the best solution would be to give a negotiated contract of 5,000 houses and ancillary works to each of three contractors, to be completed

in five years. At the end of the second year, comparison should be made of performance and quality, and a further contract might be offered to all three contractors if found satisfactory. If found unsatisfactory, other contractors could be brought in. Plans of initial submission would be scrutinised and then agreed by the corporation's staff. At the same time, prices would be carefully examined and fixed to cover an initial period of two years, with opportunity for review at the end of the two-year period.
As to accountability, the Scottish Development Department has a good idea of prices in Scotland and can easily give an opinion on the costs of the projects concerned. The Department could also bring in the Comptroller and Auditor General's Department.
This proposal follows closely on the lines suggested by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister when, as Leader of the Opposition, he said at Leeds on Saturday, 8th February, 1964:
To encourage new methods, there is a lot to be said for handing over the building programme of a complete new town to one or more big contractors who are prepared to use non-traditional methods because such methods are priced out of the market if restricted to contracts based on penny-numbers Factory methods involve a big layout and demand secure orders for years ahead.
I would much prefer to be praising the new town instead of criticising it. With what I would take to be the inevitable reshaping of the board, I hope to be able, with other hon. Members, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Midlothian (Mr. J. Hill), to enjoy a closer relationship than we have hitherto been allowed. It is because I am passionately interested in Livingston's success, and hope to change the situation for the better, that I have raised this subject tonight.

3.10 a.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Dr. J. Dickson Mabon): I, too, regret the absence of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Argyll (Mr. Noble), the leader of the former Scottish Ministers, because I am concerned, to a large extent, with their stewardship in the years of origin of this new town. However, I shall try to do my best to speak not only for them, but for ourselves.
My hon. Friend the Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell) has quite legitimately made a number of criticisms of


the corporation's handling of the contracts for work on the office block and on the houses at Livingston station which were awarded to Messrs. R. Pert and Sons. When there have been serious delays in completing the work on both those important contracts, when a good deal of the work has been of unsatisfactory quality, as my hon. Friend has said, and when, finally, the firm has gone bankrupt, it would be absurd to pretend that nothing has gone wrong. However, the criticisms we are making must be fairly judged in the circumstances of the time.
The corporation urgently needed office premises and was under considerable pressure to complete 270 houses for the needs of the British Motor Corporation. It had not yet built up a full technical staff; had, indeed, only a mere handful of architects. It was out of the question to do the detailed work involved in going out to tender in the orthodox way. In these circumstances, the corporation approached three selected large firms for designs and estimates for the office block and 10 selected firms for offers for the construction of traditional houses. On the advice of the corporation's technical officers Pert's was awarded these contracts. The Scottish Development Department and its technical advisers approved the proposals as the reputation of Pert's for speedy and efficient work was high at the time. Indeed, as late as December, 1964, public housing contracts outside Livingston were being awarded to Pert's.
Having said this I must say that there are matters where it seems to me that the corporation or the officers whom it appointed are more open to criticism. It is unfortunate that Pert's claimed to have built elsewhere the house types it proposed to build at Livingston, but that the fact was never checked; it emerged later that it had never done so. Secondly, while the insertion of a bonus-penalty clause is not normally recommended it might well have been a sensible precaution in the particular circumstances of the Pert's contracts where speedy work was essential. Thirdly, the work on the housing contract was well behind schedule by March, 1964, and the work on the office block began to fall behind thereafter and the corporation's officers did not, perhaps, react to this delay as quickly or as vigorously as they should

have done. There were also serious faults in workmanship which should have come to light much sooner than they did. Among others, the chief architect at the time must accept some responsibility for this.
Mr. Daniel was appointed by the board of the corporation and his resignation, which was requested by the board, is a matter within its discretion. The board recognises, however, his admirable talents in relation to broad planning concepts of a new town, and the master plan is largely his, as my hon. Friend said—the master plan which has been presented to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and will shortly be made public.
Reference was made by my hon. Friend to the other losses of staff. Six architects left as a direct result of the resignation of Mr. Daniel, and a further eight left for domestic or other reasons, or on obtaining higher paid posts. Of these eight, three may have to some extent been affected in their decision by Mr. Daniel's resignation, although they did not claim it as a reason for their leaving. My hon. Friend asked whether it was the practice that when an architect at Livingtson wished to contact an engineer he had to do so in writing through the chief architect and the chief engineer.
The corporation did have a rule that if an architect made firm proposals for design changes which would affect the arrangements for the roads and the site servicing, his proposals ought to be referred to the chief engineer and the chief architect and planning officer for decision, because of the danger that such changes would delay the progress of the new town. Apart from this, I am assured that the normal relationships between technical colleagues existed.
My hon. Friend referred to the right hon. Member for Argyll and the absence of any reference—

Mr. Edward M. Taylor: rose—

Dr. Mabon: I am sorry; I have very little time—

Mr. Taylor: rose—

Dr. Mabon: I am sorry. I cannot give way. I have far too little time.
I was talking about the absence of any reference to the delay on the office block in the Scottish New Towns Report for 1963–64. May I take the second point first? Because this Report covers the year ending 31st March, 1964, and, up to that time, the work on the office block was reasonably well up to schedule, there was no occasion for any such reference to be made.

Mr. Edward M. Taylor: On a point of Order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. Both hon. Gentlemen during this Adjournment debate have made attacks on the former Secretary of State for Scotland. The two hon. Gentlemen on this side have waited here all evening to make a reply on his behalf. Is it in order for the hon. Gentleman not to give way at all?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Samuel Storey): That is not a point of order.

Dr. Mabon: In view of the limited time, I regret this, but notice was given and this subject has been on the Order Paper for some time. I have to say a great deal to defend the position of the present Secretary of State and the Department which I represent, and I propose to do that.
I was saying that the position at 31st March, 1964, in the Report is confirmed by Appendix A to the accounts published with the Report, on page 179, which indicates that the estimated expenditure for the year was £100,000, and that the actual expenditure achieved was a little under £93,000. This is not a large difference nor an unusual one, and could well be accounted for by delays in obtaining approvals and by inclement weather. The estimate was based on payments. I shall not say any more about the right hon. Member for Argyll, in view of the interruption, but my hon. Friend asked whether my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State would behave in the same way. I should like to take this opportunity of explaining my right hon. Friend's view of his responsibilities.
The corporation is appointed by the Secretary of State to do the job of developing the new town, and within the general policy laid down by Ministers, it must be allowed a good deal of discretion as to how it does that job. It would be intolerable for the corporation and for its chief officers to feel that everything

they did must be approved by St. Andrew's House, and that at each step forward which they take, they must look back over their shoulders. This does not mean that my right hon. Friend and his colleagues do not have a very close interest in the growth and prosperity of the Scottish new towns. They are concerned that the new towns should be developed with the greatest success possible. My right hon. Friend and his Departments are always ready to give advice and guidance on any subject, and may well tender advice from time to time.
This debate has provided an opportunity to clear up a number of misunderstandings and misapprehensions which have arisen about the new town. I am grateful that my hon. Friend has made these criticisms with the constructive purpose of ensuring that any obstacles in the way of Livingston's future success are removed. Let me assure him that there is every evidence that the setbacks which the development corporation has sustained have not affected the new town's long term prospects. They must be seen in relation to the scale and complexity of the complete Livingston enterprise, and, as such, may later be regarded as unfortunate but minor. Public attention has regrettably been concentrated on limited aspects of the development corporation's work. The three major advances are being lost sight of. They are: first, the master plan; secondly, the modern house building programme; and, thirdly, the industrial boom.
The master plan will provide the basic framework for development of the new town, and, to ensure that it is kept fully up to date, will be kept under continuous review as work proceeds, and revised as necessary from time to time. The plan, which makes full provision for the motor car on the lines envisaged in the Buchanan Report, also contains most imaginative proposals for development of a town centre in the Almond Valley, which would be converted into a public park containing a chain of ornamental lakes.
In preparing its master plan, the corporation has had the assistance of the Lothians regional survey and plan, which has been prepared at the same time by teams of economic and physical planning consultants under the direction


of Professor Robertson, of Glasgow University, and Professors Sir Robert Matthew and Percy Johnson-Marshall, of Edinburgh University. The plan, which was commissioned by the County Councils of Midlothian and West Lothian, the corporation and the Government, prescribes a key rôle for the new town in a substantial build-up of employment and population in an area of 80 square miles. Work is already in hand on the first stage of the new town's major road system, and industrial estate roads and other essential services.
In housing, work has begun on a scheme of 1,000 houses by industrialised methods which is the first of its scale not merely in Scotland, but in the United Kingdom as a whole. The factory which is to produce the prefabricated units for this scheme is complete, and the machinery is already being installed. When it begins production, in July this year, it will have a capacity of 2,500 houses a year which other house building authorities can draw on. A third housing scheme will be going to tender next month, a fourth is at an advanced design stage, and two more are at earlier design stages. This represents a very large volume of work, and I am assured that there is every prospect of the development corporation making good in 1967 the target of 4,000 houses adopted for its first four years of activity.
Industrial progress has been outstanding by any standards, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his generous recognition of the successful efforts of the corporation and the general manager. Work has started on the site where a giant forging press, the first of its kind in Europe, is to be erected. It will form part of a very large factory which will make forgings for the aircraft, power and oil industries in British and continental markets. The scale of this undertaking can be estimated from the fact that the capital investment involved is between £8 million and £9 million and the employment potential is 2,000. Equally valuable are the advanced skills and equipment it will introduce into Scotland.
In addition, the first purpose-built factory, with an employment potential of 110 jobs, was completed in December, 1964, and contracts have been let for

the first two of four advanced factories for which the development corporation has already had a number of inquiries. A cement mixing company, ancillary to the industrialised housing project, has completed its own factory, and within the last few days a second company producing houses by industrialised methods has announced its intention of building a factory at Livingston. Finally, I have every reason to hope that an early announcement will be made concerning a very valuable project which is likely to provide substantial employment of a desirable kind.
All in all, Livingston's prospects of successful and speedy development are very promising. The new town will be the centre of a whole system of regional growth and can expect to benefit as a community from the impetus built up in the surrounding areas. But not only will major industrial developments in the adjoining areas contribute to its growth. It can also expect a substantial contribution from Edinburgh not only by way of industrial movement, but also from commuters who choose to live outside the city itself and who will make a useful contribution to the social life of the new town.
With the combination of the imaginative master plan, the trend-setting housing programme, the outstanding industrial progress already achieved and the rôle of the new town as the focal point of planned regional development, the new town's future is assured. There is every ground for confidence that past and, in the long term, minor setbacks are being overcome and that by its own efforts and with the support of all concerned—in which my hon. Friend is, I know, ready to play a substantial part—Livingston will prove even more successful than the new towns which have preceded it.
I regret that I could not give way during the debate to allow other hon. Members to speak, but I think it fair to say that in the Press controversy which surrounds a great deal of my hon. Friend's criticism he to some extent suffered a great deal. He gave the right hon. Member for Argyll every opportunity to respond, and I regret very much that the right hon. Gentleman or one of the other former Scottish Ministers was not in a position to reply. All I will


say is that in seeking to present this version from the new Government, we have been fair, I think, in recording all that has gone before and, what is more important, what lies ahead. Livingston can be a great town, and I am sure that we have the good will of hon. Members on both sides, particularly my hon.
Friend the Member for West Lothian and his colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Midlothian (Mr. J. Hill), in saying that the new town will advance to ever widening horizons of prosperity.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-five minutes past Three o'clock a.m.